John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, near the town of Roxbury in the Catskill Mountains. Growing up on his parents' farm, he absorbed much of the nature and country life that he would later write about in his many volumes. He taught briefly, married, and during the Civil War settled in Washington, D.C. where he obtained a job as a clerk in the Treasury Department. It was during his nine years in Washington that he published his first book, Wake-Robin. In 1873 he returned to New York State and established his home "Riverby" on the west bank of the Hudson River at West Park. He began fruit farming and continued to write, publishing a new book about every two years. This is mainly a book about the birds, or more properly an invitation to the study of Ornithology, and the purpose of the author will be carried out in proportion as it awakens and stimulates the interest of the reader in this branch of Natural History. Through written less in the spirit of exact science than with the freedom of love and old acquaintance, the author has in no instance taken liberties with facts, or allowed his imagination to influence him to the extent of giving a false impression or a wrong coloring. What the author is offering is a careful and conscientious record of actual observations and experiences, and is true as it stands written, every word of it.