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my favorite Audubon's:
Snowy owl
One of the species I have yet to add to my life list. Audubon writes:
"This beautiful bird is merely a winter visitor of the United States, where it is seldom seen before the month of November, and whence it retires as early as the beginning of February. It wanders at times along the sea coast, as far as Georgia. I have occasionally seen it in the lower parts of Kentucky, and in the State of Ohio. It is more frequently met with in Pennsylvania and the Jerseys; but in Massachusetts and Maine it is far more abundant than in any other parts of the Union...Scarcely is there a winter which does not bring several of these hardy natives of the north to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. At the break of day, one morning, when I lay hidden in a pile of drift logs, at that place, waiting for a shot at some wild geese, I had an opportunity of seeing this Owl secure fish.”
"This beautiful bird is merely a winter visitor of the United States, where it is seldom seen before the month of November, and whence it retires as early as the beginning of February. It wanders at times along the sea coast, as far as Georgia. I have occasionally seen it in the lower parts of Kentucky, and in the State of Ohio. It is more frequently met with in Pennsylvania and the Jerseys; but in Massachusetts and Maine it is far more abundant than in any other parts of the Union...Scarcely is there a winter which does not bring several of these hardy natives of the north to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. At the break of day, one morning, when I lay hidden in a pile of drift logs, at that place, waiting for a shot at some wild geese, I had an opportunity of seeing this Owl secure fish.”
By Audubon the naturalist, from his Ornithological Biography.
On January 20, a complete first edition set of Audubon's The Birds of America including his five-volume Ornithological Biography will be auctioned in New York at Christie's. There are only 120 known copies of this huge work. As big as a coffee table, weighing over 200 pounds, it contains 435 hand-colored engravings (depicting 497 species) printed on handmade paper measuring 29.5 X 39.5 inches. Assembled into four volumes, it's massive.
I'll be speaking at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge today at 1 p.m. about the "Making of Audubon's Birds of America," a most remarkable feat.
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