| The origin of this bibliography lies with another bibliography, with J. Michael Scott, Thomas W. Haislip, Jr., and Margaret Thompson's list of Oregon references for the years 19351970 (Northwest Science 46:122139, 1972). I found their cross-indexed species list so useful, and so easy to use, that I naively decided that the same should be done for references published before 1935, listed in Ira Gabrielson and Stanley Jewett's Birds of Oregon (1940, Oregon State College, Corvallis). At the time this seemed like a simple matter, and undeterred by the large number of references or the rarity of many of them, I earnestly began. It was not long before I realized that although Scott, Haislip, and Thompson had asserted that Gabrielson and Jewett had adequately covered the references before 1935, there were problems with the list in Birds of OregonI found articles not included there and others that, although listed, were not at all about birds in Oregon or Oregon observations. I began to realize the difficulty of my task. I resolved that only by diligently and systematically reading the early ornithological journals might I accomplish my goal. The present list, after many years, is the result. |
| My criteria for inclusion in this bibliography are rather strict, forged from my early plodding through Gabrielson and Jewett's bibliography. I include only references that specifically mention Oregon or unambiguous Oregon locations. I do not include here, therefore, references that merely identify occurrence as "on the Pacific Coast," "in the Western states," "north to the Columbia River," and so forth. The kind or quality of references I include is very broad and is essentially the same allowed by Gabrielson and Jewett. In many instances this means listing trivial or secondary references, but I believe it is better to include the seemingly unimportant than to accidentally omit the useful. Witmer Stone said in his review of the second installment of Joseph Grinnell's bibliography of California ornithology that a bibliography, ''if worth doing, is worth doing well, for any error in a bibliography, like one in a dictionary, is likely to be copied over and over again, by those who have not the opportunity or inclination for personal verification." This is also true for omissions, and I therefore have been reluctant to exclude items lest they be lost to researchers. However, I have not included here newspaper articles, nor game law announcements and legislation. I have not made a concerted search for pertinent juvenile literature. |
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