Sandy, so nice of you to have saved these. They may be too precious to be auctioned away. Perhaps we should explore giving it to UA library to their special papers collection.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad
On Thursday, November 20, 2025, 8:00 PM, Sandy Berger <sndbrgr...> wrote:
I have 25 copies of Bird Lore dating from 1923-1928. The 1922 census is in one of the magazines and has counts from Fayetteville and Monticello. Reading these magazines is simply fascinating. Most of the CBCs were done by foot in many inches of snow. People didn’t own cars yet. There’s articles about thousands of Bald Eagles being killed in Alaska all for a bounty. There are articles about educating children, raising crows, field reports, and on and on.
About Lano. He was on the Bird-Lore Advisory Counsel which placed new young birders with a person of authority on bird-life in their area. He was listed in the Jan/Feb 1928 magazine, but his obit said he passed in July at the age of 65.
I plan on putting these copies in the silent auction next Spring at the state meeting here in Fort Smith. They were found in a closet at Northside High School some years ago and given to me. I’ve wondered if they belonged to Ruth Armstrong.
Sandy BergerFort Smith
On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 9:53 PM Allan Mueller <akcmueller...> wrote:
Thanks for posting this.
Allan
On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 5:00 PM Leif Anderson <leifforesteranderson...> wrote:
Great find Todd. Interesting is finding 25 N Bobwhite on one count. Nowadays 25 might be all we get in the entire state
On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 4:43 PM Ragupathy Kannan <0000013b0ad14faf-dmarc-request...> wrote:
What a gem from the past, Todd. James and Neal say the following about Albert Lano in Arkansas Birds.
Albert Lano, a pharmacist from Minnesota, moved to Arkansas in 1912.....Though blind in later life, Lano nevertheless continued his lifelong interest in birds, prepared a modest collection of bird skins, and published six short papers between 1913 and 1927 about birds found in the state.
One of Lano's papers was on the Prairie Chicken in Arkansas. It reported that on 15 November 1919, a bird was shot by a farmer 8 miles west of Fayetteville. Another of Lano's papers described the electrocution of a Great Blue Heron. On Friday 14 November, 2025 at 02:22:41 pm GMT-6, Todd Ballinger <todd.ballinger...> wrote:
I've been doing some research on the history of birding in Washington County and stumbled on this gem in Bird-Lore, one of the first birding journals. Albert Lano, by the way, was blind and a professor at the university. Here's the title page and the paragraph on the 1920 Fayetteville census:
We were the only submission from Arkansas that year. Looking at earlier issues, it looks like Dewitt leads the state as the first to hold a Christmas bird count. Here's the description of their 1917 "Christmas census." (in the 1918 edition of Bird-Lore)
--Todd Ballinger, Fayetteville
