Audubon's marsh wren

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....my favorite Audubon's:

Nuttall's short-billed marsh wren, (today, sedge wren)

What the heck. I still have a few more favorite Audubon's I want to share. In the case of the sedge wren, what a beautifully constructed nest. Audubon writes: 

"The nest of the Short-billed Marsh Wren is made wholly of dry or partly green sedge, bent usually from the top of the grassy tuft in which the fabric is situated. With much ingenuity and labour these simple materials are loosely entwined together into a spherical form, with a small and rather obscure entrance left on the side. A thin lining is sometimes added to the whole, of the linty fibres of the silk-weed, or some other similar material. The eggs, pure white, and destitute of spots, are probably from six to eight.”

By Audubon the naturalist, from his Ornithological Biography.

Why is Audubon relevant? Because in addition to his artistic talent, perseverance and derring-do, he was a d--- good naturalist. A lot of what we know today about birds, the audacious, often farouche, John James Audubon was the first to put in print.

Audubon ultimately painted 497 species of birds for his masterwork, The Birds of America, thus establishing a new number for how many can be found in this country (today we know the number is over 600). During the process he identified 25 new species and numerous sub-species unknown to science.

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