SHE HEARD THE BIRDS

D’Aquino distills the life of ornithologist and activist Florence Merriam Bailey.

The narrative highlights salient moments in Bailey’s childhood: a summerlong camping trip with her father and brother; learning about stars and planets with her astronomer mother. Through elision and metaphor, D’Aquino links bird song to Bailey’s awakening consciousness: “She had the feeling they had something important to tell her.” Bailey’s activism was sharpened by the global decimation of bird species to supply the Euro-American millinery trade’s insatiable appetite for the bodies and plumage of birds. “People thought wearing birds on hats looked beautiful. To Bailey, those hats were the ugliest things she had ever seen.” Modernist collage illustrations contrast grayscale with bright color to emphasize nature’s paramount beauty and importance. Thus, two fashionable women, portrayed in black-and-white garb against a painted gray background, wear elaborate hats composed of colorful plumage and bird corpses. (D’Aquino sidesteps patriarchy’s profiteering role in the trend, for which women alone were pilloried.) Bailey’s tools for quiet observation of live birds—a camera, notebook, pencils, binoculars, and ears—are depicted; 10 common birds accompany their phonetic song-snippets. Other spreads distort perspective, stylize form, and celebrate the collage medium for itself, with torn-paper confetti representing leaves and clouds. Bailey herself is a paper-white cutout in patterned blue-and-white clothing, visually linked to birds and sky.

A good introduction to an important pathfinder among women naturalists.