Robert Verity Clem, a native of Chataham, Mass, was a devoted birdwatcher all his life. In 1950, at the age of 16, Clem had his first one man show of bird paintings at the Berkshire Museum. He was the youngest person ever to have a show at the local museum, and one critic wrote that Clem "showed a remarkable start in a difficult specialty".

While Clem never took any formal painting lessons, his work has been compared to that of Andrew Wyeth. His unique achievement is that he portrays birds not as isolated specimens but showing their environments in a manner so convincing as to suggest to us an immediate experience of our own. Many shorebird species are so similar that they are difficult to identify, and Clem's watercolors have received much critical acclaim not only because they are beautiful, but also because they accurately show the subtle difference between and among the species depicted.

Clem was asked by his friend, Gardner Stout, to illustrate his proposed book, Clem agreed, and traveled from his home on the Atlantic coast in Massachusetts to shorelines in California, Texas, New Jersey and other locales, preparing preliminary drawings. He later composed these into finished opaque watercolors. "Niney percent of what I do", Clem said, "is observing, looking at birds for countless hours through binoculars or telescope." Upon it's publication in 1967, Clem's watercolors were immediately hailed as masterpieces of natural history art.