Vanishing Wings: A Tale of Three Birds of Prey (association copy)

NY: Franklin Watts, 1972. First edition. Hardcover. Signed on the title page by Bancroft and located at "Sanibel-Captiva," the islands on the Gulf Coast of Florida where he lived and worked as a writer and nature guide after a career in journalism. With the owl-illustration bookplate on the pastedown of notable naturalist Shirley Ann Briggs and taped below it a note "From the desk of Joseph B. Phillips" dated 1973 that recommends and relays the book as a gift to Briggs. This book is a science-informed novel set in "the immediate future" that traces the lives of a bald eagle, an osprey, and a falcon as they migrate and breed and confront  environmental hazards, notably DDT: "The reader is able to see how the killing of aphids in a small cornfield by DDT can affect birds and animals hundred of miles away  ... The impact [of the book] exceeds that of the most alarming scientific treatise on the subject of vanishing species." Shirley Ann Briggs was a close friend and colleague of Rachel Carson and later championed her legacy, and as such the emphasis on DDT in this similar "fable for tomorrow," to use Carson's phrase, in a book published ten years after Silent Spring, makes this copy a  compelling association. With full page illustrations of the birds by John Hamberger. Fine in a near fine price-clipped jacket with a touch of wear to corners and spine ends, a few very short tears to edges.