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Sir Walter Raleigh's Bird Book
A novel marketing technique for 1585
© John White illus, courtesy British Museum
When Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to tempt English settlers to the new lands of Virginia, he planned a novel marketing technique: a bird book. He commissioned Thomas Harriot and John White to document the birds on an island in present-day North Carolina. Harriot, a linguist, recorded the names of the birds in the native Algonquian language. White was a painter, and his watercolors included the first images of American birds seen by Europeans — including this Brown Pelican. Raleigh’s book never came together, but that didn’t stop colonists from settling on the island.
BirdNote®
Walter Raleigh’s Bird Book
Written by Rick Wright
This is BirdNote.
[Tundra Swans http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/141136]
When Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to tempt English settlers to the new lands of Virginia, he used a novel marketing technique: he commissioned a bird book. So in 1585, Thomas Harriot and John White landed on an island in present-day North Carolina.
They sent Sir Walter a list of 86 bird species they found, most of which, they announced, they had dined on: turkeys, Passenger Pigeons, and — they said — “great stores” of swans and geese.
[Tundra Swans http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/141136]
Harriot, a linguist, recorded for the first time the names of the birds in the native Algonquian language. White was a painter, and his 27 watercolors include the first images of American birds seen by Europeans.
[Eastern Bluebird http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/13560]
Raleigh’s hoped-for book never came together. But that didn’t discourage 115 colonists from settling on the island Harriot and White had explored. By the time White himself returned in 1590, though, the Roanoke colonists were gone, leaving behind a single word carved into a tree: Croatoan.
[Eastern Bluebird http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/13560]
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Eastern Bluebird [13560] recorded by A A Allen; Tundra Swan [141136] by Gerrit Vyn.
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
© 2016 Tune In to Nature.org February 2016 Narrator: Michael Stein
ID# raleighw-01-02-23-2016 raleighw-01
Rick Wright
Writer
Michael Stein
NarratorSights & Sounds
