Margaret Morse Nice

Margaret Morse Nice was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, December 6, 1883. She is most noted for Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow, published originally in Germany. In 1937, the work was published in two volumes by the Linnaean Society of New York and is now obtainable in Dover reprints. According to noted ornithologist Ernst Mayr, Mrs. Nice, almost single-handedly initiated a new era in American ornithology. In 1938 she spent two months studying the habits of captive birds with Konrad Lorenz in Austria. During her lifetime, she published more than 250 articles in scientific journals. Her book, The Watcher at the Nest, was the first book illustrated by Roger Tory Peterson. Research is a Passion with Me, her autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Mrs. Nice died in 1974.

The study of animal behavior is the only and ultimate source of understanding ourselves. Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow, 1937.

Birds and human beings are visual and auditory animals. Birds and infra-human mammals are nearer human beings emotionally than intellectually. Ibid.

The basic needs of all animal life are nutrition, protection, and reproduction. Ibid.

There are beginnings of primitive culture among birds and infra-human mammals, experience being handed down non-genetically from generation to generation, particularly in matters regarding protection from enemies. Ibid.

A great deal of man's behavior may be explained on the basis of his instincts as a social animal - his need for companionship and leadership, his lack of independence, his obedience to custom, his reliance on some power outside himself. Ibid.

Like those birds whose chief concern is the nest rather than the offspring, some women make a fetish of their houses to the detriment of their families' happiness. Ibid.

Incredible as it may seem, almost complete ignorance reigned as to the life history of this abundant, friendly, and well-nigh universally distributed bird. I went to the books and read that this species has two notes beside the song, and that incubation lasted ten to fourteen days and was performed by both sexes&endash;meager enough information and all of it wrong. The Watcher at the Nest, 1939.

March had seen stirring drama in our garden: the return of Uno from the South and the winning of his territory from the grasp of 4M; the tireless singing of both birds until the coming of their mates; the resolute defense of territories; and the symbolic nesting activities. Yet all of this was but the first act in the ago-old drama of the renewal of life upon the earth. Ibid.

The study of nature is a limitless field, the most fascinating adventure in the world. Research Is A Passion With Me, 1979

Unfortunately, especially in the United States, it has become the fashion to write up researches so stiffly, matter-of-factly, and technically that all feeling and atmosphere have been banished from too many of them. Ibid.

I ponder over the shapes of leaves, their infinite variety, their strangeness, their beauty. Ibid.

We who love nature, who see and try to understand and interpret, are following the true goal. We have a talisman against the futility of the lives of many people. We must try to open the eyes of the unseeing to the beauty and wonder of the earth and its wild life. Ibid.