Forbush, Edward Howe & May, John Richard
Edward Howe Forbush was consulting ornithologist to the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture and in 1908 he became the first official State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, a position which later became the Director of Ornithology in the Department of Agriculture. He was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Audubon Society and was elected a Fellow of the American Ornithologists Union.

In 1923, John Richard May became a staff member working under Mr. Forbush and assisted in the preparation of The Birds of Massachusetts. On the retirement of Forbush, he became Director of Ornithology in Massachusetts.

Loveliest of all water-fowl the Wood Duck stands supreme. A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central North America, 1959

I well recall the day when, as an impressionable lad, I first saw the Bald Eagle wheeling majestically up the sky until it rose to a height almost beyond the utmost compass of my straining vision, and there&endash;a mere speck in the blue&endash;it sailed away until it vanished in the vast spaces of the upper air. Ibid.

The Eskimo Curlew formerly was one of the extremely abundant birds of America. It was said to have visited Newfoundland in autumn in millions that darkened the sky. Ibid.

The Yellow-billed Cuckoo is a harbinger of summer. When the woods and orchards have put on their spring greenery, when the blossom-buds of the moccasin flower and the columbine begin to unfold their petals, then the voice of the cuckoo is heard in the land. Ibid.

We have to get up very early in the morning to get ahead of the Crow. Ibid.

One evening when I had lingered in the loved woods until twilight came, I heard in the air a wild outburst of intricate rapturous melody ascending far above the tree-tops, and saw the little singer rising against the glow of the western sky . . . When the song was done and the exhausted singer fell from out the sky, his final notes were those of the common song of my little friend, the Oven-bird . . . Ibid.

Thoreau speaks often of this mysterious 'night warbler,' but apparently never identified it. His anxiety to know the source of the night melody was so great that Emerson warned him to cease trying to find out what it was lest he should succeed and 'thereafter lose all interest in life.' Ibid.