Ruth Harris Thomas was a prominent Arkansas ornithologist and author of the long-running Arkansas Gazette column “The Country Diarist.”

Thomas was born August 25, 1900, in Kentucky. She graduated from Louisiana State University in 1923, and then moved to Little Rock, Arkansas and began working for the Arkansas Gazette as a reporter, a position she held until 1927, when she married Stanley Powers Rowland Thomas, an associate editor at the Gazette. In 1933, Rowland Thomas began writing a nature column for the paper, but by 1935 he had turned over the column to his wife, and it became known as “The Country Diarist.” Ruth Thomas also authored several articles for scientific journals, and two books, Crip, Come Home: The Story of a Bird Who Came to Stay (1952), a work of narrative non-fiction, and Brush Goat, Milk Goat (1957), a children’s book. Active in the birding community, Thomas was a member of the American Ornithologists Union, the Wilson Ornithological Club, the Arkansas Audubon Society, and the Northeastern Bird-Banding Association, Inc. She passed away February 8, 1973.