Deviation Actions
Description
Circa 1909
Illustrated by Chester A. Reed
Published by Chas. K. Reed, Worcester Mass.
#13 of series
Part of a set of 18 cards promoting a pioneering bird-watching guide from 1909
About the artist - Chester A. Reed (1876 - 1912)
Chester A. Reed was a good teacher, but also a great artist. It is not surprising that, in 1896, at his graduation from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a diploma in electrical engineering, he decided to join his father’s taxidermy enterprise. Even though he was already recognized as an artist by his classmates at the polytechnic institute, his 2-years of training in technical drawing prepared him to communicate his long-time passion, the practice of ornithology.
The magazine “American Ornithology for the Home and School, 1901-1906” gave him the chance to show his talents as an artist, but also to introduce ornithology enthusiasts to bird observation. With that in mind, Chester published his first bird identification chart based on color characteristics in February 1902.
It was the first time that ornithology enthusiasts were provided with a technical tool that allowed them to identify birds easily from a distance, without having to kill the bird, a method that was commonly used at the time. For the first time, bird drawings were made according to their technical identification characteristics and the colors were used to mirror the birds in the wild reliably. Chester’s academic artistic training helped him draw technical scale representations of each species.
From the success of that chart, two books soon followed an by 1906 over 27,000 "bird guides" had been sold in the U.S. His books were the start of the birding “Field Guides” that we know today.
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Artist info source - chester-reed.org/en/first-fiel…