Louise Birt O'Connell Baynes (1876 - February 25, 1958) was an American photographer and naturalist.
Baynes was born as Louise Birt O'Connell in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1876. [1] [2] She married naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes on April 24, 1901, after a seven-year engagement. [3] [4] By 1904, she was living in Meriden, New Hampshire, where she would live most of the rest of her life. [1] In Meriden, she aided her husband in his work and in the establishment of the Meriden Bird Club and sanctuary. [5] Baynes and her husband were both members of the Cornish Equal Suffrage League. [6]
Bayne's husband, Ernest, died in 1925. [3] Baynes died on February 25, 1958, in Philadelphia. [5] Her ashes were dispersed in Meriden in the same spot as her husband's ashes. [5]
Baynes wrote and illustrated articles about animals and nature for magazines. She published "The Frolics of My Black Bear Cub," a story with accompanying photographs, in the St. Nicholas magazine in 1909. [7] Louise Baynes edited and provided photographs for many of Ernest Harold Baynes' books. Her photographs illustrated The Sprite, the Story of a Red Fox (1924), [8] and Wild Life in the Blue Mountain Forest (1931). [9] She was the editor of Three Young Crows and Other Bird Stories (1927) [10] and My Wild Animal Guests (1930). [11]