The Upland Bird Art of Maynard Reece

Maynard Reece brings to this book a lifetime of experience sketching and painting birds in the prairies, mountains, and deserts of North America. Filled with light and movement, each of the eighty-four richly detailed paintings, watercolors, pencil drawings, and lithographs evokes a particular scene that shows the habits and activities of the birds in their natural environments - flying, feeding, courting, and nesting. Keeping in mind that most upland birds are seen in the air rather than on the ground, Reece often paints them from the sportsman's view. Among the many memorable images are a covey of bobwhites exploding from cover, ring-necked pheasants speeding away over a snowy cornfield, wild turkey gobblers strutting in their full plumage, grouse flushing through the alders, and California quail running up rocky terrain.
The extraordinary illustrations are complemented by Reece's informative descriptions, entertaining anecdotes, and lively observations of bird behavior, giving the reader an intimate and insightful perspective on the subject and making it a pleasure to learn about the various species.

These oil and watercolor paintings of upland birds--pheasant, grouse, quail, wild turkey, ptarmigan, snipe, among others--amply display Reece's realistic style. The artist, who worked for many years as an outdoor-magazine illustrator, likes to ``paint from the sportsman's view'' (as Roger Tory Peterson notes in his introduction), catching birds flushing and fleeing, whirring through the air. He is also an able field naturalist, complementing his artwork with habitat notes of midwestern prairie, forest, and marsh, as well as behavioral tidbits gleaned from the field; were it not oversized, Reece's work would make a useful field guide. While the birds command center stage, what steals the show are Reece's superb landscape settings, from the disheveled sweep of a mown cornfield to the intimate woodlands so many of these birds like to call home. (84 illustrations, 79 in color) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.