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Tag: John James Audubon

Practically the definition of “extinct,” but . . . maybe not forever?

Practically the definition of “extinct,” but . . . maybe not forever?

The Artdog Image of Interest: Image 4 of a series of four by John James Audubon Passenger Pigeon (Columba Migratoria), 1838, by John James Audubon. Note the scientific name is now Ectopistes migratorius. The demise of the Passenger Pigeon is one of the most extensively-documented extinctions I’ve ever seen. All three of the other bird species I’ve highlighted in this series are carefully listed as “Extinct or Critically Endangered.” Not the Passenger Pigeon. We know to the day–and possibly to the hour–when the last Passenger Pigeon, a female named…

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Reduced to “cabinet skins”?

Reduced to “cabinet skins”?

The Artdog Image of Interest, Image 3 of a planned series of four by John James Audubon Eskimo Curlew, 1833, by John James Audubon In my opinion, this is one of the weirder compositions Audubon produced. Although he always had to work from dead specimens, having either shot them himself (then posed them propped up on wires) or having received skins (as with the Bachman’s Warbler last week), he almost never portrayed them as dead, unless shown as prey of an avian predator. However, in this one the female is laid…

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Lost with the canebrakes

Lost with the canebrakes

The Artdog Image of Interest, image 2 of a planned series of 4 by John James Audubon. Bachman’s Warbler, by John James Audubon and Maria Martin (who drew the franklinia branch–named for Benjamin Franklin). It was engraved by Robert Havell Jr. (from an 1833 watercolor by Audubon) in 1863. This image is fascinating to me as an artist, as well as because it depicts another bird species that is believed to now be extinct. A look at the cutline shows that this was a true collaboration, between the artist-ornithologist…

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The elusive Ivorybill

The elusive Ivorybill

The Artdog Image of Interest, Image 1 of a planned series of 4 by John James Audubon I’ll never forget the day my mother thought we’d seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker at our backyard bird feeder. I was a little kid: I’d never heard of one, before. And it was the biggest bird we’d ever seen at the feeder. It wasn’t an Ivorybill, of course. This was sometime in the 1960s, and the last confirmed sighting had been in 1944. Eventually, Mom reluctantly decided it probably had been a Pileated woodpecker, which…

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