author
Harrison Bruce Tordoff
b. 1923
Drawn from a life that stretched from World War II flying to groundbreaking bird conservation, this work comes from a writer who knew the natural world firsthand. Best known as an ornithologist and conservation leader, he helped restore peregrine falcons in the American Midwest and wrote with the authority of long field experience.
2 Audiobooks
Check-list of the Birds of Kansas
by Harrison Bruce Tordoff
Studies of Birds Killed in Nocturnal Migration
by Harrison Bruce Tordoff, Robert Morrow Mengel
About the author
Raised in Mechanicville, New York, Harrison Bruce "Bud" Tordoff (1923–2008) developed an early love of hunting, fishing, and wildlife that shaped the rest of his life. His education was interrupted by World War II, when he served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Forces, and he later returned to complete his studies at Cornell University before earning graduate degrees at the University of Michigan.
Tordoff became an influential American ornithologist, teacher, and museum director. He taught at the University of Kansas and the University of Minnesota, and he also led the Bell Museum of Natural History. His research focused especially on birds, including finches, but he is widely remembered for conservation work that helped bring peregrine falcons back to the Midwest.
His writing reflects a rare mix of scientific knowledge, field experience, and practical conservation work. For listeners interested in nature, birds, and the people who helped protect them, his work carries the perspective of someone who spent a lifetime studying the living world closely.