Nice worked on the life-histories of birds at a time when most of the focus was on collection, description and geographic listing. Her work on the song sparrow is considered a landmark and Deborah Strom wrote in Bird Watching with American Women (1986) that her work was so vast and difficult that the mind boggles at the time and patience required. Ernst Mayr wrote that Nice almost single-handedly initiated a new era in American ornithology and the only effective counter movement against the list-chasing movement.