From Peterson Field Guide to birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson pp.316-317
"Someone once confided in me that Dad's rendition of a robin was no just any old robin, but the perfect robin. Somehow he was able to convey a bird not at a specific moment in time, awkwardly posed with feathers in disarray, but rather as the mind saw it, the robin idealized, with feathers neatly patterned and plump...He worked mostly from memory, using a dry, beat-up specimen of the bird for details of anatomy and occasionally a photograph or two. And he was able to piece together an image of the bird as it should have been. Not just any robin, but all robins." (p.x)
From Lee Allen Peterson's Forward to Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson
"In a lifetime, it is a fortunate person who has one good idea. Roger Tor Peterson had one. It grew into A Field Guide to the Birds, which was published in 1934 and became one of the most important and influential books about the natural world written in the twentieth century. " (p. 3)
Peterson was the son of a salesman and school teacher. His childhood was difficult and he retreated into books and into the study of birds. As a boy Peterson was inspired by the book Two Little Savages by Ernest Thomson Seton published in 1903. Peterson identified with the character Yann who resembled Peterson in his passion for wildlife and the desire to know the names of animals and plants. The book extolled connecting with Indian culture through which one could connect with the natural world. In the introduction to his 1930 guide Peterson refers to Yann's idea to stylize the plumage of ducks to help in their identification. Yann ' "...noticed, however, that all ducks were different all had blotches and streaks that were their labels or identification tags. He deduced then, that if he could put their labels or 'uniforms' down on paper, he would know the ducks as soon as he saw them on the water" ' (Carleson, 2007 p.50) "...from a long way off..." (Seton, 1903 p.196).
Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography By Douglas Carlson
