Bailey was one of the first to study live birds in their natural environment instead of studying speciments that had been shot and brought into the lab. She was the first woman to be an associate member of the American Ornithologists' Union, and for 50 years, with her husband Vernon Bailey (chief naturalist for the U.S. Biological Survey) she spent summers in the West and Southwest observing birds and making field notes, often from the back of a horse or mule.
