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This chapter describes the first few years of Thomas Sandler Roberts’s new career as professor of ornithology and as an associate curator of the Zoological Museum of the University of Minnesota. Roberts now had time to pursue his lifelong love affair with birds. He went about establishing a genuine natural history museum, to be filled a collection of birds and mammals. In addition to this start-up work, Roberts wrote publications which served as an abbreviated version of the bird book Roberts had long envisioned. In 1915, he published the monograph“The Winter Bird-Life of Minnesota” which appeared in the magazine Fins, Feathers and Fur. It contained a report illustrated with his photographs of birds across the state. Four years later he would release A Review of the Ornithology of Minnesota, a research publication. Both of these publications contributed more systematically to the documentation of Minnesota birds than anything prior.

This chapter describes the seven years of work csrried out by Thomas Sandler Roberts and his associates in the creation of The Birds of Minnesota. In 1927, his wife Jennie had a stroke which essentially incapacitated her. Because of this, Roberts greatly curtailed his social life. Reduced sociability helped Roberts in working on his book. He felt great pressure to finish it as he reached the age of seventy, in addition to the decline of health and death of friends the dwindling birdlife in Minnesota. Despite of his diminished openness, his friends donated money for the work. Their contributions became the Thomas S. Roberts Fund, to be used initially for the publications of the book, and later as a permanent trust for the natural history museum. For seven years, The Birds of Minnesota consumed him. He worked in his home and at the museum, all the while teaching at the University of Minnesota.

This chapter examines the “empty days” of Thomas Sandler Roberts, a period when he was away from his work and would go to study birds. He used these periods to work towards his goal of assembling a definitive account of Minnesota bird life. The field seasons of 1898 to 1902 where defining moments for Roberts as he took advantage of the new field of wildlife photography. He liked the camera as it enhanced his appreciation for nature’s beauty, and he liked the fact that he could“shoot” a bird without bloodshed. Roberts collected from each of the state’s major ecosystems: Heron Lake, Lake Vermillion, the aspen parklands of Marshall County, the mixed woods of Itasca, and the oak savannah and Big Woods remnants skirting Minneapolis and St. Paul. Some of his photographs were admired, and eventually published in the magazine Bird-Lore, the official organ of Audubon societies.

This chapter discusses the many gains and losses that Thomas Sandler Roberts experienced during the post-Great War years as a museum curator and a professor. His ornithology course matured over the years and now ran for two terms. Every April, classes headed outside to the field. They visited Lakes Calhoun and Harriet for migrating ducks, grebes, gulls, and songbirds. The birding spots his classes visited over the years reveal what had been lost and retained in natural habitat as Minneapolis grew. The period also saw the departure Jenness Richardson which prompted Roberts to look for another taxidermist. He found one in the form of Walter John Breckenridge. He then found himself having his own radio show in 1925 but unfortunately, things took a turn for the worst as his wife Jennie came down with a debilitating sickness, and subsequently he lost both a granddaughter and a friend, John Nordquist, to illness.

This chapter provides an account of a trip to Florida made by Thomas Sandler Roberts in 1914. Roberts was on medical duty during the trip guarding his patient James Stroud Bell, the chief executive of Washburn-Crosby Company. Bell was in ill health and decided to go to Florida for recuperation, but he was reluctant to go without his personal physician, Roberts, who took advantage of the three-month trip to enjoy the avifauna of the Everglades. The chapter also describes how the period after the trip proved to be a good time to make a leap to full-time ornithology. Roberts would eventually take the giant step to leave his medical career behind when Bell succumbed to illness in May of next year. In August of 1915, Roberts had already secured a new work address in Millard Hall at the University of Minnesota, where he would start his new career.