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The Watcher at the Nest
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May 29, 2020
The Watcher at the Nest was published in 1939, but it seems more modern than many natural history books published since.
The first 10 chapters summarize for the lay reader Margaret Morse Nice's groundbreaking research on song sparrows. She was the first ornithologist to do in-depth studies of a particular species. She conducted the field work at her 40-acre property outside Columbus, Ohio, while raising her children.
The line illustrations in the book are drawn by a 30-year-old Roger Tory Peterson, who had published the first edition of his field guide to birds five years earlier. Morse Nice was 56 when this book was released and already an established innovator in her field. Even in a book for a popular audience, she inserts professional citations and includes a reference list at the back of the book.
Her prose is deceptively rich. Her style is Edwardian rather than Victorian, which is to say that there is something clean and terse about it, but it is also not without quaintness. Brought up in Amherst, Mass., the daughter of a history professor, she attended Mount Holyoke College and then received her master's degree from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. She is not, however, a shrinking violet. In the essay, "Herons With the Golden Crowns" she writes:
"I was glad I had my faithful old revolver that had accompanied me on my solitary trips on horseback or on foot since college days. What I would have shot, I am sure I do not know. It was a comfort, nevertheless, just as it had been many times before, in spite of the fact that I never had had occasion even to show it to an enemy."
This is a serious scientist with a laser-beam focus on what she wants to do. Each chapter is filled with detailed and number-filled descriptions of her bird observations. She stands for hours at a time, watching the behavior of a nesting pair of birds, enduring clouds of biting insects, and taking notes. Long passages in every chapter are given over to transcriptions from her field notes, which, while telegraphic, are perfectly literate.
She is guilty of imputing human emotions and motivations to tiny passerine birds, a practice that is nowadays frowned upon, but she does not gush. Instead, she is wryly funny about the manliness of one song sparrow versus another and the shrewishness of a particular female that she simply doesn't like.
This popular version of her natural historical experience is made all the more interesting by her honesty about what interrupts her observations. Some evenings she is overcome by insects and retreats indoors. The ends of some nesting cycles go unrecorded because she has go out of town for a meeting or to "go back East." Her children make cameo appearances here and there, lending a hand or simply being the reason she is called away from her sparrows.
The books is constructed very cleverly. The first 10 chapters are all linked and focus on song sparrows. These chapters chronicle events in the late 1920s and early '30s outside Columbus, Ohio. Chapter 11 describes the depredations of cowbirds on the song sparrows and thereby provides a bridge to a series of stand-alone chapters that focus on different species. In chapter 12 we find ourselves in Pelham, Mass. (just north of Amherst), probably in the first decade of the 20th century, watching her watch a pair of magnolia warblers. In chapters 13 and 14 we stay both in central Massachusetts and watch warblers. In chapter 15 we find ourselves in Oklahoma watching Bell's vireos. We stay in Oklahoma to study mourning doves and yellow-crowned night-herons.
So far, we appear to be following Morse Nice through her life. We get an extended look at her classic study of song sparrows, which she began as a 40something mother, then jump back to her graduate or even undergradate days at her parents summer home, and then move to the Midwest where her husband got his first appointment in 1913.
We then experience a jump backwards to tell the story of her graduate-school relationship with a bobwhite called Zopiloti and then the final chapter takes place in 1937 with her returning to Oklahoma with her 26-year-old daughter Constance to tour the state. Here Morse Nice gets political for the first time. She laments the poor agricultural practices that led to the dust bowl and she prevents the logging of a virgin stand of cypresses that is supporting a heron rookery.
All in all, The Watcher at the Nest is a rigorous natural history narrative that includes far more information than some later 20th century writing of this type, which tends toward the romantic and also includes too much information about the observer. When you read Margaret Morse Nice you are right there in the field with her and what she is telling you is fascinating.
The first 10 chapters summarize for the lay reader Margaret Morse Nice's groundbreaking research on song sparrows. She was the first ornithologist to do in-depth studies of a particular species. She conducted the field work at her 40-acre property outside Columbus, Ohio, while raising her children.
The line illustrations in the book are drawn by a 30-year-old Roger Tory Peterson, who had published the first edition of his field guide to birds five years earlier. Morse Nice was 56 when this book was released and already an established innovator in her field. Even in a book for a popular audience, she inserts professional citations and includes a reference list at the back of the book.
Her prose is deceptively rich. Her style is Edwardian rather than Victorian, which is to say that there is something clean and terse about it, but it is also not without quaintness. Brought up in Amherst, Mass., the daughter of a history professor, she attended Mount Holyoke College and then received her master's degree from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. She is not, however, a shrinking violet. In the essay, "Herons With the Golden Crowns" she writes:
"I was glad I had my faithful old revolver that had accompanied me on my solitary trips on horseback or on foot since college days. What I would have shot, I am sure I do not know. It was a comfort, nevertheless, just as it had been many times before, in spite of the fact that I never had had occasion even to show it to an enemy."
This is a serious scientist with a laser-beam focus on what she wants to do. Each chapter is filled with detailed and number-filled descriptions of her bird observations. She stands for hours at a time, watching the behavior of a nesting pair of birds, enduring clouds of biting insects, and taking notes. Long passages in every chapter are given over to transcriptions from her field notes, which, while telegraphic, are perfectly literate.
She is guilty of imputing human emotions and motivations to tiny passerine birds, a practice that is nowadays frowned upon, but she does not gush. Instead, she is wryly funny about the manliness of one song sparrow versus another and the shrewishness of a particular female that she simply doesn't like.
This popular version of her natural historical experience is made all the more interesting by her honesty about what interrupts her observations. Some evenings she is overcome by insects and retreats indoors. The ends of some nesting cycles go unrecorded because she has go out of town for a meeting or to "go back East." Her children make cameo appearances here and there, lending a hand or simply being the reason she is called away from her sparrows.
The books is constructed very cleverly. The first 10 chapters are all linked and focus on song sparrows. These chapters chronicle events in the late 1920s and early '30s outside Columbus, Ohio. Chapter 11 describes the depredations of cowbirds on the song sparrows and thereby provides a bridge to a series of stand-alone chapters that focus on different species. In chapter 12 we find ourselves in Pelham, Mass. (just north of Amherst), probably in the first decade of the 20th century, watching her watch a pair of magnolia warblers. In chapters 13 and 14 we stay both in central Massachusetts and watch warblers. In chapter 15 we find ourselves in Oklahoma watching Bell's vireos. We stay in Oklahoma to study mourning doves and yellow-crowned night-herons.
So far, we appear to be following Morse Nice through her life. We get an extended look at her classic study of song sparrows, which she began as a 40something mother, then jump back to her graduate or even undergradate days at her parents summer home, and then move to the Midwest where her husband got his first appointment in 1913.
We then experience a jump backwards to tell the story of her graduate-school relationship with a bobwhite called Zopiloti and then the final chapter takes place in 1937 with her returning to Oklahoma with her 26-year-old daughter Constance to tour the state. Here Morse Nice gets political for the first time. She laments the poor agricultural practices that led to the dust bowl and she prevents the logging of a virgin stand of cypresses that is supporting a heron rookery.
All in all, The Watcher at the Nest is a rigorous natural history narrative that includes far more information than some later 20th century writing of this type, which tends toward the romantic and also includes too much information about the observer. When you read Margaret Morse Nice you are right there in the field with her and what she is telling you is fascinating.
Displaying 1 of 1 review