Birds and Trees of North America is Rex Brasher's seminal work, comprised of 862 watercolor paintings bound in an encyclopedic set. Between 1929 and 1932, he created 100 twelve-volume sets—1,200 individual books—and sent them to patrons across North America. Volume 9 contains 119 hand-colored plates, depicting grosbeaks, finches, red polls, goldfinches, longspurs, juncos, and sparrows.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; family, Fringillidae
FINCHES have more species and are probably more numerous than any other bird family. They have coneshape bills with downward opening and in many species the cutting edge forms a powerful tooth. Wings are short and rounded, adapted to short flights. Tails vary in length and shape but always of twelve feathers. They are essentially seedeaters and are less apt to starve than insectivorous birds and the high heat value of seeds renders them immune to cold.
Their nests are usually built of dried grass or other stringy vegetation and the eggs — from 3 to 5 — of some greenish or pale blue shade more or less spotted with browns. Incubation period about two weeks and some species raise three broods in a season, altho the majority are content with two.
Birds in this volume all natural size.
Birds and Trees of North America is a vivid record of taxonomy in motion. The scientific and common names within these volumes do not always align with modern standards, nor do they always align with historical standards. While Rex followed the 1910 checklist of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), he occasionally deviated from it according to his own observations and convictions. He disagreed with the “hair-splitting fad” of systematists and the possessive form of bird names, yet maintained the necessity of a standard language for understanding the avian world. Where Rex intentionally diverged from standard classification, we have preserved his work in its original form.