Ornithology for the people - Florence Merriam Bailey

By Jessie Reese

           Florence Merriam Bailey was a pioneering naturalist best known as a celebrated field guide author and for her extensive observational field studies of birds. She was born in 1863 and developed an early interest in natural history and ornithology, which became her life’s pursuit. As a community organizer and environmental advocate, she helped form several chapters of the fledgling Audubon Society and led classes in ornithology there.

 

 

She began observational studies of birds near her hometown in New York and her undergraduate institution, Smith College. In contrast to traditional ornithology at the time, where the standard was to shoot the bird first, then identify it using taxonomic key, Florence refused to kill birds, even if it meant letting one go unidentified. She authored her first field guide in 1899, Birds Through an Opera Glass, which focused on bird identification in the field for amateurs.

 

 

After living in Western North America and publishing several more identification guides, Florence moved back east and met and married Vernon Bailey, a naturalist and colleague of her brother, both of whom worked for the U.S. Biological Survey. They traveled and worked together throughout Western North America, though sources report that he “collected and studied” while she merely “observed”.

 

 

 

However, Florence consistently published her observations in peer reviewed journals and authored several more books, while her husband authored mostly government technical reports. Florence was recognized throughout her lifetime by such achievements as being the first female elected fellow of the American Ornithologist’s Union (AOU) and the first female awarded the AOU’s Brewster Memorial Award for her work Birds of New Mexico. However, it is likely that Florence encountered significant bias early in her career, at a time when male ornithologists opposed the growing popularity of birdwatching, in part because many field guide authors, birdwatching enthusiasts, and Audubon supporters were women. Florence also was severely underrepresented in Who’s Who in America, where she was listed simply as the “brother of C. Hart Merriam” (then the Chief Naturalist at the U.S. Biological Survey) and as being “interested in ornithology”. Interested though she was, a proper citation would include the fact that her first book was the first modern field guide of its kind, that she authored over 100 publications, and helped lead American ornithology away from collection towards the modern observational study.