Birds of Arabia by MEINERTZHAGEN, Colonel R - 1954

Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1954. FIRST EDITION. With 19 colored plates by G. E. Lodge, D. M. Reid-Henry and Miss Talbot Henry, text illustrations, photographs, maps (including a folding map in back cover pocket). Original cloth, in the original dust jacket, small tear to top corners and top of spine; interior with browning on the fly-leaf, otherwise in fine shape. From the libraries of the American anthropologist Henry Field (1902-1986), great nephew of Marshall Field, with his signature dated 1954 and his bookplate on the paste-down, and James M. Dolan Jr. First edition of a monumental book on the avifauna of the whole Arabian Peninsula and the regions of Sinai, Palestine, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq. The author discusses many aspects of migration in the desert belt of south-west Asia, including a full systematic list of Arabian birds with notes on habits, including lesser known traits such as the love of sweet food. Of particular interest is his study of bird collisions. This is the first comprehensive account on the ornithology of a country that is richer in bird life than is generally imagined.

Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) was a celebrated British war hero and ornithologist. He was befriended and trusted by many prominent figures such as Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence. He is known as the spy who failed to kill Hitler when he met him while carrying a loaded gun in his pocket. After his retirement, Meinertzhagen devoted himself to ornithology, completing and edited Nicoll's Birds of Egypt in 1930 and mounting a collecting expedition to the Middle East and Africa. He wrote numerous papers for scientific journals such as Ibis and accumulated a vast collection of birds.