Preface
by Virginia Marie Peterson
Text: 1 2 3 4    Plate Detail: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

I owe a great debt of heartfelt gratitude to the following people.

• Noble Proctor, professor of biology at Southern Connecticut State University, author, and world birder, who worked closely with Roger for more than 30 years, was the natural choice to complete the text. He also helped check the art and final maps.
• Paul Lehman, former editor of the American Birding Association magazine Birding and university instructor, updated and added maps to my final map roughs. Paul is widely recognized as the authority on the distribution of North American birds.
• H. Douglas Pratt, staff research associate of Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, is an acclaimed bird artist and specialist on the birds of Hawaii and the tropical Pacific. Doug painted the four rare flycatchers on Roger's final plate. Beautifully painted are the Cuban Pewee, La Sagra's Flycatcher, Variegated Flycatcher, and Loggerhead Kingbird. The additional flycatchers in the finished plate are Roger's paintings from his Field Guide to Mexican Birds.
• Pete Dunne, director of Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey and vice president of natural history information for New Jersey Audubon Society, introduced several innovations to the content and design and provided editorial counsel for this fifth edition. He is considered one of birding's most capable spokespersons.
• Robert Bateman wrote the foreword. He is acclaimed as one of the world's foremost wildlife artists.