Checkerback's Journey: The Migration of the Ruddy Turnstone

Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1969. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Inscribed on the blue front free endpaper in the year of publication: "For one Yellow Bird from the other, with a great deal of love, Margie, July 1969." Also signed on the title page with a separate pen (although a nickname is used in the inscription, we are sure it's also Sanger based on a comparison of handwriting samples). Uncommon signed. 

Marjory Bartlett Sanger was a mid-century naturalist writer from Florida. She was an ornithologist (a member of the AOU and many other bird organizations) with a specialty on herons and the author of 11 books, most of them about birds and their habitats along with one interpretive biography of William Bartram. Her other nonfiction books on ecology include Cypress Country, World of the Great White Heron, Mangrove Island, and Forest in the Sand. She graduate from Wellesley College and was the editor of Mass Audubon's Bulletin before she moved back to Florida, where she was an administrator and teacher at an Audubon Society camp in addition to her writing.

Checkerback's Journey is her fourth book and her second work of nonfiction. It follows a ruddy turnstone on its migration from Martinique to the Arctic tundras and "tells the fascinating story of the ecology of our entire Atlantic seacoast." See this short original review of the book in The New York Times. With an illustration on almost every page by Betty Fraser. A nice collaboration between women. 

A small quarto in mustard cloth. A very good book on account of a hard bump to lower corner that split the cloth about a quarter inch at the front hinge, otherwise near fine. In a very good jacket with a short tear in that same spot, toning, darkening to spine, a few scattered stains.