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This Day in Arkansas History

February 8, 1973

Ruth Harris Thomas, a highly regarded amateur ornithologist who wrote a column on birding for forty years, died at the age of seventy-two. Moving to Little Rock in 1923 to become a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette, Thomas soon gave up her reporting career after her marriage to the paper’s associate editor, Stanley Powers Rowland Thomas. In 1930, Ruth took over her husband’s assigned column on country life, “The Country Diarist.” As her interest in amateur ornithology grew, she went on to publish nine scientific papers on birds, leading to her best-known work Crip, Come Home: The Story of a Bird Who Came to Stay.

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John Audubon

John James Audubon, a frontier naturalist and artist, is famous for illustrating and writing The Birds of America. He visited Arkansas Territory in 1820 and 1822 and documented Arkansas’s birds, including the Traill’s flycatcher, also known as the willow flycatcher, which is the only bird originally discovered in Arkansas. Audubon is shown here in this engraving from an 1850s publication.

 

John James Audubon, a frontier naturalist and artist, is famous for illustrating and writing The Birds of America. He visited Arkansas Territory in 1820 and 1822 and documented Arkansas’s birds, including the Traill’s flycatcher, also known as the willow flycatcher, which is the only bird originally discovered in Arkansas. Audubon is shown here in this engraving from an 1850s publication.

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About the Encyclopedia

The CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a free, authoritative source of information about the rich history, geography, and culture of Arkansas. It is updated regularly to ensure the people of Arkansas have an accurate and accessible resource to explore our heritage. We invite you to browse our text entries and media galleries to learn more about the people, places, events, legends, and lore of the 25th state. We are continually adding new entries, photographs, maps, videos, and audio files, so check back frequently to see what’s new.

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