A Love Affair with Birds - The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts by Sue Leaf [View all]

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I've just finished reading this book and thought some of the birders here might want to check it out.

Thomas Sadler Roberts was my husband's great grandfather and a pioneering ornithologist in Minnesota. He wrote the definitive bird book "The Birds of Minnesota" based very much on his own and his network of friends' observations about birds from his youth in Minneapolis in the late 1800s. He also promoted education about the state's wildlife, especially the birds, and conservation of habitat to preserve the birds he loved.

While the book is mostly a biography of Thomas Sadler Roberts, it also gives insight into the changes in attitude towards the birds and conservation over Roberts' lifetime. It also shows how he used his influence with his wealthy patients and friends to create Minneapolis' Bell Museum of Natural History (http://www.bellmuseum.umn.edu/).

Without people like Roberts and the students he taught and inspired, we would not have the conservation efforts that have helped preserved the small scrap of the natural world he took for granted as a young man. I'm proud that he is an ancestor of my husband!

A more complete review of the book is at http://www.minnpost.com/books/2013/05/love-affair-birds-chronicles-life-thomas-sadler-roberts