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About
the Work of Arthur Cleveland Bent (1866-1954)
Everyone interested in birds should discover the magnificent
work of Arthur Cleveland Bent (1866-1954),
one of America's greatest ornithologists. His extraordinary Life
Histories of North American Birds, published in a
twenty-one volume series (1919-1968), provided behavioral
information not available in the standard field guides. These
pioneering studies are the durable foundation on which almost all
other compilations of North American bird biology (including the
contemporary Birds of North America) rest. In them Bent and
his collaborators present, in enthusiastic, readable prose,
comprehensive information about courtship, nesting, eggs, young,
plumages, food, behavior, voice, enemies, and more. Readers who
supplement their field guides with these delightful accounts
acquire a deeper understanding of both the birds and their
observers (as well as an interesting cultural history lesson).
Arthur Cleveland Bent was a successful businessman who became
interested in birds during his childhood in Massachusetts. A
dedicated amateur ornithologist, he traveled extensively
throughout North America and acquired a thorough knowledge of the
avifauna. In 1901 he began submitting papers to The Auk,
the journal of the American
Ornithologists' Union, making important contributions on
distributions and nesting habits.
In 1910, at the request of the Smithsonian
Institution, Bent commenced work on the monumental series of Life
Histories of North American Birds. He devoted the remaining
forty-four years of his life to the project, gathering information
from, and supplementing his own observations with the published
literature and unpublished notes of volunteer contributors and
collaborating authors throughout North America. (All told, he
acknowledged contributions and help from over 800 individuals.)
Arthur
Cleveland Bent
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Bent organized the
material and presented it, together with his own commentary,
in a series of National Museum
Bulletins. For decades these works were unsurpassed
and remained the most comprehensive and interesting
collection of field observations of North American birds
available. His encyclopedic Life Histories
established Bent as the chief biographer of North American
birds. They are literary landmarks, classics in the field of
ornithology.
When he died at the age of 88, Bent had published
nineteen volumes and completed work on the twentieth volume
(which was seen through publication in 1958 by Wendell
Taber, his close friend and literary executor). He had also
finished or begun to arrange numerous histories for the
final, twenty-first volume (compiled and edited by Oliver L.
Austin, Jr. and published in 1968). |
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