Secrets of the Friendly Woods: Centennial Edition

A delightful series of sketches about our native woods and their furred and feathered inhabitants

When Rex Brasher was eight years old, he vowed to paint every kind of bird in North America. Forty years later, he accomplished his monumental task and decided to write this book. Brasher was recognized at the time by museum experts and ornithologists as the twentieth-century Audubon.

While studying birds and sketching them from life in the field, Brasher absorbed an amazing amount of firsthand information about birds and other animals. Originally published in 1926, Secrets of the Friendly Woods is a charming paean to the creatures he came to know and love during field trips with his father, as a young man tramping through the woods of Maine and working on fishing boats, vagabonding across the North American continent by train and on foot, and later living in the Taconic Hills. In twelve whimsical chapters, Brasher describes encounters with many of his beloved birds, a wildcat, a family of raccoons, a domesticated wolf in Maine, and numerous squirrels, along with the beauty and wonder of the flora around them.

A perfect read for bird watchers, nature lovers, and artists alike, this centennial edition of Brasher's classic work is illustrated with his pencil and ink drawings as well as black-and-white images of his paintings. Secrets of the Friendly Woods, through the delightful voice of the author, introduces the reader to the intimate lives of birds and animals, while conveying something of the mysteries that lie behind trees and in the shadows of rock and bush.