If you just want to see birds without reading any introduction here's a quick link to the Table of Contents
This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. See the back of the book for detailed information.
[This book has been altered as part of the Hoffmann's Challenge. The Hoffmann's Challenge consists of adding pictures of the birds described in this book or found in the same area.
You can always download the original version of the book from Google.
The Hoffmann's Challenge does not modify the original Hoffmann texts and descriptions of the birds but it could potentially add some new information as it has passed more than 100 years from the release of the book. With the years and the technological progress, like DNA analysis, many species have changed families or even orders. Lots of families and orders have changed names. I have decided not to move too many things around and keep them, more or less, in the order they were written but you can see a few exceptions. There is a lot of potential corrections in this regards to be made. If there are any text corrections or additions, they will be in brackets [ ]. The goal of the challenge is to add pictures per species. The more species you cover, the better.
There are some species that did not exist in the area at the beginning of the 20th century because they were hunt to local extinction in the 19th century. But then, after protective measures were taken those species were eventually back. They can be added to the book. Also, there are vagrant birds that sometimes appear somewhere in the region. They can be added to the book too. In short, as long as they are wild birds, if you photographed them in Eastern New York or New England, feel free to add them to the book.
The original illustrations should be left intact. They are amazing and a part of the American birding history. The cover has been scanned directly by me from my personal copy of the book.
The formatting of the book has been cleaned up in this latest edition. A lot! The good folks of Google do a great job by scanning these old books and putting them in a digital format but there are lots and lots of errors all over the place. The page breaks and headers don't make any sense in this format, there are white pages that don't need to be there, there are missing illustrations, there are missing symbols, like female and male symbols, that have not been recognized properly by the automatic conversion process and, basically, there are weird things all over the place that make the experience of reading this amazing book less enjoyable. Luckily, I have the first edition of the book where I can see how things should actually look like and I have cleaned up as much as I could. Another new approach for this edition is that I'm focusing now in online browsing of the book rather than the ePub version. With the 2021 edition I saw that many people were having troubles reading the ePubs so a website is the way forward. In addition, I broke it in many more pages than previously so it's a little more organized. There are always things to improve and I'll keep doing it from now at any moment, not just at the end of the year.
The Table of Contents as you see it below didn't exist in the original book but it is included to make a better digital reading experience. If you click on a particular species in the Table of Contents it will take you to the page where the description of that bird is. And if you click on the name of the bird in that page, you will be back to the table of contents. If there is a star next to a species name it means there is at least a photograph. In the Table of Contents I try to put either common names or current scientific names of the species. In the rest of the book you will see both names, the ones Hoffmann used and the current ones in brackets.
The text of this book is Public Domain but the pictures you add to your version of the book belong to you and you have the copyright of them but remember that you do not own the text and the original illustrations, those belong to humanity now.
I am always learning to be better at identifying birds. I hope I will keep getting better but, meanwhile, the good folks of ABA What's this Bird, Birds of Long Island, LI Birds, Birdtography among others on Facebook and Twitter have helped me a lot with the identifications. Among many of them, Dinane Taggart Harrier and Jim Botta have been terrific. Also several people in Twitter have corrected my identifications. Thank you all. If you see any errors, please let me know and I'll correct them.
The photographs in this book are high resolution so it is recommended that you read this book only if you are connected to a Wi-Fi or your mobile data quota might suffer.
If you are interested in getting some of the photographs in actual paper, want to send me your comments let me know (see below the ways to find me).
Last, any corrections or new information added in this edition is most likely taken from my own experience, from the Wikipedia (it's really great for birds! Yes, really!) or from any of the Cornell University sites or apps.
If you are actually reading and using this guide and not just having a peak, I would appreciate if you could make a small $5 donation via PayPal to help me with the website maintenance costs. If I collect enough I will put it in its own server space not in a shared one as it is right now. Thanks!
Enjoy it,
Fran.
You can find me at:
https://www.twitter.com/hipogrito (Updates to this site will be posted on Twitter)
https://www.facebook.com/Hipogrito
https://vero.co/hipogrito
https://www.instagram.com/hipogrito/
https://www.threads.net/hipogrito/
Or via e-mail: hipogrito@gmail.com
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I AM indebted to a number of friends for assistance and advice in the preparation of this book. Mr. F. H. Allen, Mr. William Brewster, Mr. Walter Faxon, and Dr. C: W. Townsend have read either the entire manuscript or parts of it, and have made valuable suggestions. Miss M. E. Blatchford has also read the manuscript and given much helpful advice. I am indebted to Mr. G. M. Allen for the advance sheets of his “Birds of New Hampshire," which have helped me on points of distribution. Mr. F. M. Chapman has very kindly permitted me to use the dimensions given in his “ Birds of Eastern North America.” I am indebted to Mr. Brewster and to Mr. Walter Deane for the use of skins in Mr. Brewster's collection, and to Dr. W. McM. Woodworth for the use of skins in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Mrs. Florence Merriam Bailey has kindly permitted the use of cuts which have already appeared in her “ Birds of Village and Field.”
If this book proves helpful to others, it will pay, vicariously at least, a little of the great debt which I owe to Mr. Walter Faxon, whose instruction and example have been an invaluable guide and stimulus to me in the past.