Birds on a Rock
Out of Print
In 1969, when Ian MacNeil, the long-time editor of the Cape Breton Post, agreed to run a column by Frank Robertson, he probably thought he was doing Frank a favor. To everyone’s surprise, “For the Birds” soon established itself as one of the paper’s most popular offerings. Readers who would not know a blue jay from a bobolink found themselves hooked. A column written for aficionados would never have had this impact, but there were always people in Frank’s columns and vivid accounts of their interaction with birds. His prose had the stately feel of a bygone era. It brought landscapes – and peoplescapes, and birdscapes – to life in word pictures with which every Cape Bretoner could identify”.
From the “Foreword,” by Parker Barss Donham.