Obtain 435 Excessive Decision Photos from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of America

In our expe­ri­ence, fowl lovers fall into two gen­er­al cat­e­gories:

Eager­ly obser­vant cat­a­loguers like John James Audubon …

And people of us who can­not resist assign­ing anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­al­i­ties and behav­iors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca, a stun­ning col­lec­tion of prints from life-size water­col­ors he professional­duced between 1827 and 1838.

Our sus­pi­cions have lit­tle to do with biol­o­gy, however moderately, a cer­tain zesti­ness of expres­sion, an overem­phat­ic beak, a droll gleam within the eye.

The Audubon Society’s new­ly redesigned internet­web site abounds with trea­positive for these in both camp:

Free excessive res down­a great deal of all 435 plates.

Mp3s of every specimen’s name.

And vin­tage com­males­tary that effec­tive­ly splits the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous locu­tions of anoth­er age.

Take as an illustration, the Bur­row­ing Owl, as described by self-taught nat­u­ral­ist Thomas Say (1787–1834):

It’s delight­ful, dur­ing tremendous weath­er, to see these reside­ly lit­tle crea­tures sport­ing concerning the entrance of their bur­rows, that are at all times stored within the neat­est restore, and are sometimes inhab­it­ed by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als. When alarmed, they imme­di­ate­ly take refuge of their sub­ter­ranean cham­bers; or, if the dread­ed dan­ger be not imme­di­ate­ly impend­ing, they stand close to the brink of the doorway, courageous­ly bark­ing and flour­ish­ing their tails, or else sit erect to recon­noitre the transfer­ments of the ene­my.

The notes of ornithol­o­gist John Kirk Townsend (1809 – 1851) sug­gest that not each­one was as tak­en with the species as Say (who was, in all honest­ness, the daddy of Amer­i­can ento­mol­o­gy):

Noth­ing will be extra unpleas­ant than the bag­ging of this species, on account of the fleas with which their plumage swarms, and which in all prob­a­bil­i­ty have been left within the bur­row by the Unhealthy­ger or Mar­mot, on the time it was aban­doned by these ani­mals. I do know of no oth­er fowl infest­ed by that sort of ver­min. 

The Com­mon Gallinule, above, sug­gests that there’s usually extra to those birds than meets the attention. His some­what sheep­ish look­ing coun­te­nance belies the crimson sizzling love life Audubon recounts:

… the person­i­fes­ta­tions of their ama­to­ry propen­si­ty have been fairly comment­ready. The male birds court docket­ed the females, each on the land and on the water; they fre­quent­ly unfold out their tail like a fan, and moved spherical every oth­er, emit­ting a mur­mur­ing sound for some sec­onds. The feminine would after­wards stroll to the water’s edge, stand within the water as much as her breast, and obtain the caress­es of the male, who imme­di­ate­ly after would strut on the water earlier than her, jerk­ing with speedy­i­ty his unfold tail for awhile, after which they’d each resume their ordi­nary occu­pa­tions.

Being that we’re agency­ly plant­ed within the sec­ond sort of fowl lover’s camp, this ornitho­log­i­cal cor­nu­copia foremost­ly serves to whet our urge for food for extra Falseknees, self-described fowl nerd Joshua Barkman’s beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered internet­com­ic.

Sure, Audubon’s Indi­go Fowl, aka Petit Pape­bleu, “an lively and reside­ly lit­tle fel­low” who “pos­sess­es a lot ele­gance in his form, and in addition a cer­tain diploma of agency­ness in his make” was sep­a­rat­ed by a cen­tu­ry or so from “Temper Indi­go”—we pre­sume that’s the tune caught in Barkman’s fowl’s head—however he does look moderately pre­oc­cu­pied, no?

Pos­si­bly simply assume­ing of meal­worms…

Discover Audubon’s Birds of Amer­i­ca by chrono­log­i­cal or alpha­wager­i­cal order, or by state, and down­load all of them totally free right here.

Word: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this publish appeared on our web site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Fowl Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with File­ings Going Again to 1929

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­fowl Species Identified within the nineteenth Cen­tu­ry Will get Restored & Put On-line

What Form of Fowl Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Reply

Discover an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Sq.-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Fowl Library: A Library Constructed Espe­cial­ly for Our High-quality Feath­ered Buddies

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an writer, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.