Post by Wetlander on Nov 18, 2008 11:23:24 GMT -8
Home sick 
, on a rainy day...
My wife's mother passed on an old birdguide from 1963 "Western Bird Guide For Youth" by Ernest S. Booth. The coloured illustrations are crude, but do show ID features and his descriptions are clear and helpful.
What grabbed my attention was the charming language and the emphatic re-enforcement of the message in the intro.
This is the openning paragraph:
"Bird watching can be the most fun you have ever had in your life if you will start out right, and keep going. No one is either too old or too young to begin. Let's start right now! What do you say?"
Booths get them to take a walk in the backyard, or park or lakeside and count the birds. If you don't know one, write down a description etc. etc.
My favorite line...
After the boy gets better at IDing and see all sorts of new birds...
"Bird watching is getting to be more fun than eating cake and ice cream now!"
;D ;D ;D AMEN Brother!
(Now pie & ice cream would be going too far...)
Then the kid starts on field trips because "by now Dad is interested in birds too.."
So the kid influences the Dad... how 60s.
Then later "by this time Dad is really enthusiastic about birds, and even Mother has bought a pair of glasses and uses them quite often on the birds in the front yard."
Notice how it is "Dad" and "Mother", not only typical early 60s sexism, but a bit of the Hunter/Gatherer theory of the origins of birding. Dad and the boy go out into the world daily to bird. Mother sees what she can see from up on her pedestal in the kitchen. I read an anthropologist suggesting that birding and keeping lists are variations of hunting behavior, knowing food sources that sort of thing. I do admit to a certain discoverer/adventure type of kick to birding for me, but thankfully we've progressed past to need to kill a wild something to understand and control it.
Booth also emphatically says that his guidebook is all they need until they're grownup. But they can also get his lifelist for only $1 and his Field Report for yearly lists for only $.75. To be fair he only makes 1 pitch in the intro, then moves on.
Lots of fun...
Forgive me fevered musings, but I warned you up front.
, on a rainy day...My wife's mother passed on an old birdguide from 1963 "Western Bird Guide For Youth" by Ernest S. Booth. The coloured illustrations are crude, but do show ID features and his descriptions are clear and helpful.
What grabbed my attention was the charming language and the emphatic re-enforcement of the message in the intro.
This is the openning paragraph:
"Bird watching can be the most fun you have ever had in your life if you will start out right, and keep going. No one is either too old or too young to begin. Let's start right now! What do you say?"
Booths get them to take a walk in the backyard, or park or lakeside and count the birds. If you don't know one, write down a description etc. etc.
My favorite line...
After the boy gets better at IDing and see all sorts of new birds...
"Bird watching is getting to be more fun than eating cake and ice cream now!"
;D ;D ;D AMEN Brother!
(Now pie & ice cream would be going too far...)
Then the kid starts on field trips because "by now Dad is interested in birds too.."
So the kid influences the Dad... how 60s.
Then later "by this time Dad is really enthusiastic about birds, and even Mother has bought a pair of glasses and uses them quite often on the birds in the front yard."
Notice how it is "Dad" and "Mother", not only typical early 60s sexism, but a bit of the Hunter/Gatherer theory of the origins of birding. Dad and the boy go out into the world daily to bird. Mother sees what she can see from up on her pedestal in the kitchen.
I read an anthropologist suggesting that birding and keeping lists are variations of hunting behavior, knowing food sources that sort of thing. I do admit to a certain discoverer/adventure type of kick to birding for me, but thankfully we've progressed past to need to kill a wild something to understand and control it.Booth also emphatically says that his guidebook is all they need until they're grownup. But they can also get his lifelist for only $1 and his Field Report for yearly lists for only $.75. To be fair he only makes 1 pitch in the intro, then moves on.
Lots of fun...
Forgive me fevered musings, but I warned you up front.
