At thirteen, George Miksch Sutton planned a school of ornithology
centered around his collection of bird skins, feathers, bones,
nests, eggs, and a prized stuffed crow. As an adult, he became one
of the most prominent ornithologists and bird artists of the
twentieth century. He describes his metamorphosis from amateur to
professional in Bird Student. Born in 1898, Sutton gives us his
clearest memories of his boyhood in Nebraska, Minnesota, Oregon,
Illinois, Texas, and West Virginia with his closely knit family.
Recognizing birds, identifying them correctly, drawing them, and
writing about them became more and more important to him. His
intense admiration for Louis Agassiz Fuertes had a good deal to do
with his beginning to draw birds in earnest, and his correspondence
and his 1916 summer visit with the generous Fuertes taught him to
look at birds with the eyes of a professional artist and to
consider the possibility of making ornithology his career. By 1918,
Sutton had talked himself into a job at the Carnegie Museum of
Natural History in Pittsburgh, which gave him fresh opportunities
to learn and travel, and his 1920 field trip to the Labrador
Peninsula stimulated his lifelong interest in arctic birds. Further
expeditions to James Bay, the east coast of Hudson Bay-on leave
from his job as state ornithologist of Pennsylvania-and Southampton
Island at the north end of Hudson Bay, in search of the elusive
blue goose and its nesting grounds, give us glimpses of field
methods before the days of sophisticated equipment. Sutton ends his
autobiography in 1935, with an account of his graduate days at
Cornell University and his position as curator of the Fuertes
Memorial Collection of Birds. Bird Student is about raising young
roadrunners and owls and prairie dogs, sailing (and being stranded)
in arctic waters, preparing specimens in the hold of a ship,
hunting birds and caribou and bears in almost inaccessible regions,
canoeing in the Far North, camping in Florida, and delivering
speeches in Pennsylvania. Sutton's gift for mixing facts and
philosophy lets us see the evolution of a naturalist, as his
inherent curiosity and innocent enjoyment of beauty led to a
permanent desire to preserve this beauty.
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