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Florence Merriam Bailey was one of the first women to recognize the ecological importance of birds. She helped stimulate the floundering Audobon Society and kept it alive. One of the first things to inspire her was the outrage of wearing birds feathers on hats. She saw that whole rookeries were being wiped out to furnish feathers to milliners; she worked hard to make people aware of the birds as live creatures and not as a fashion. She worked towards getting legislation to outlaw the use of feathers for hats or anything else. She extensively studied birds in the field, noting their habitats, feeding, nesting, and mating habits. She wrote several books especially the noted, Field Guide to Western North American birds. This book served as the foundation for the later books written by the noted Roger Tory Peterson. She wrote articles for the Audobon Society and other nature and sporting magazines. She lectured frequently and taught classes to adults. She emphasized learning among the young especially, to appreciate and watch birds in their native habitat.
Her first inspiration and mentor was her brother Hart, who was the founder and head of the U.S. Biological Survey. He later co-founded the National Geographic Society. She was later married to Vernon Bailey, one of her brother's field naturalists. Together they traveled around the country, especially the West. He studied mostly mammal life, while she studied the birds. They collaberated on several books. She traveled and studied birds well into her seventies. She was the first woman elected to the American Ornithologists Union, founded by Elliot Coues, quite a feat for the times.
Other notable ecologists that she knew were Spencer Fullerton Baird, assistant secretary of Smithsonian Institute; Clarence Birdseye, field naturalist and later inventor of frozen foods; William Brewster, editor of Auk, a bird magazine; Allan Brooks, a Canadian bird artist; John Burroughs, famous naturalist; Frank Chapman, noted naturalist with the American Museum of Natural History; Louis Agassiz Fuertes, noted bird painter and artist; George Bird Grinnell, founder of the first Audobon Society; David Starr Jordan, her cousin and also a naturalist; Olive Thorne Miller, one of the first female naturalists; Ernest Seton Thompson, naturalist writer; and Mabel Osgood Wright, one of the first women naturalists.
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