Description

ETHIOPIA:

Its Culture and Its Birds

By DEAN HOBBS BLANCHARD

Foreword by Alfred M. Bailey, Director Denver Museum of Natural History

Dust jacket: Bateleur eagle painting and bird drawing, both by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, courtesy Field Museum of Natu­ral History

Pen-and-ink sectional dividers and jacket design by Campbell Grant

Joining a party led by the late Dr. Thomas A. Lambie, celebrated medical-missionary, not too long before Mussoli­ni took over Ethiopia, the author tra­veled over 2,000 miles by muleback out of Addis Ababa, finally northward to the source of the Blue Nile.

While collecting bird specimens na­tive to Africa underscored his chief objective, he proved a keen observer of village life. Part One, angled to the layman, is an entertaining chronicle of dangerous — yet often hilarious — inci­dents along the trail.

An excellent wing shot, he assembled bird specimens by day; then generally sat up most of the night preserving their skins, dissecting their bodies, be­sides writing his ornithological notes.

Part Two, of particular appeal to the ornithologist, opens with a “Table of Birds” covering the specimens collected, each bird series identified according to the accepted system of zoological no­menclature. Further information en­velops records of location, behavior, flight pattern plus pertinent data re­vealed by under-the-tent dissection

DEAN BLANCHARD, son of a pioneer Cali­fornia family, has extended his studies of natural history to include work at Europe’s leading museums and in-the-field research and exploration on the seven continents. He is a member of the Cooper Ornithological Society, of the American Ornithologists’ Union and of the Royal Anthro­pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Ecuador, Crown Jewel of the Andes is the title of an earlier book. He and his wife, Carolyn Smith Blanchard, make their home in Santa Barbara, California.

source: revers de jaquette.