Merriam also takes an increased ecological focus, describing both the birds' diets and how those diets affect agriculture. She also provides advice for how to construct structures that would protect birds from cats and hunters that would kill them. On December 16, 1899, Merriam married Vernon Orlando Bailey, her brother's friend and a fellow member of the U.S. Biological Survey. C. Hart Merriam had become acquainted with Bailey when the latter was an adolescent in Minnesota. Bailey had written to Merriam, the author of Mammals of the Adirondacks, asking for help in identifying specimens that he had collected. In 1887, C. Hart, who had been appointed the head of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, appointed Bailey as a field agent for the U.S. Biological Survey at a wage of $40 per month. Merriam's husband's employment allowed her to incorporate the data, charts, and illustrations that the Biological Survey had conducted into her future works. The Baileys first traveled together in April 1900, when they took a carriage from Corpus Christi to Brownsville, Texas. They continued to travel together over the next 30 years, with Merriam writing as her husband conducted field studies for the Biological Survey. The most ambitious of these works was her 1902 Handbook of Birds of the Western United States, the companion volume to Frank M. Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America. The field notes that Merriam took in her travels were turned into over 50 articles appearing in periodicals such as The Auk and The Condor. Between 1902 and 1919, a work by Merriam appeared in almost every volume of The Condor. Many of these focused on the prairie wildlife in North Dakota, where her husband spent the summers from 1909 to 1916. Her notes from this region were turned into 17 papers for The Condor. In 1917, the government asked the Baileys to create a visitor guide for the wildlife of Glacier National Park. Vernon contributed the sections on mammal life, while Florence wrote about the birds. Around this time, Edward William Nelson, chief of the U.S. Biological Survey, approached Merriam with a request. Wells Cooke had been in the midst of writing a survey on bird life in New Mexico before his unexpected death in 1916, and Nelson wanted Merriam to complete his work. While the manuscript for Birds of New Mexico was completed in 1919, many publishers were reluctant