I'm giving up. Somewhere there are many boxes of mint copies of Milton
and Mary Trautman's last work, edited in 2006 from drafts and notes by
his friend and colleague Dr. Ronald Stuckey of OSU.
        A review in the Ohio Journal of Science called it "A wonderful read,
written in looser prose than science now permits, yet with all the
details and description science demands," and relates how the Trautmans
"made thorough and careful searches of 130 years of ornithological
records, turn-of-the-century sporting literature, and talked with old
market hunters, trappers and local Great Lakes commercial fisherman to
gather information about all manner of water birds observed in the
western Lake Erie basin...Often such snippets of personal observation,
historically based, are our only information from the past to indicate
how and potentially why a species once abundant has changed. That aspect
alone would make this a wonderful book to spend time perusing. Yet, its
historical records and documentation add a second level of enjoyment and
enlightenment to the reader. How many Ohioans know there were flamingos
seen here in the wild in the 1960s and 1970s?"
        I sold a box of these 305-page books, "Birds of Western Lake Erie:
Documented Observations and Notes 1850-1980," for the editor a few years
back as I went to birding get-togethers. Rob Harlan and I were among a
group of readers who'd helped with editing, and I've had to imagine them
gathering dust, but I happened to find a number of them for sale on
Amazon. I wonder if the now-retired editor, stuck with all those boxes
in his basement, may have been among those offering copies. So I mention
for readers this opportunity to acquire copies of this valuable work;
check it out on Amazon, as they are hard to find and well worth studying.
'Nuff said,
Bill Whan

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