Audubon's ruffed grouse

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If you follow the world of art or books, you may already know that later this month a complete first edition of Audubon's The Birds of America 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 just shy of 200 pounds, it contains 435 hand-colored engravings each measuring 28X30 inches. As a bonus, there's a first edition five-volume set of Audubon's Ornithological Biography, containing pretty much all the backwoods naturalist knew about every species which was considerable, plus several tall tales thrown in for good measure.

The rare set is being sold by the heirs of the 4th Duke of Portland, so it's probably been in their possession since the 1830s.

Christie's expects the book (really multiply volumes) should go for between 7 and 10 million, but the last one that sold in London went for 11.5 million so I expect more, making it the most expensive book ever purchased.  And it was created by a naturalist artist, one of the brother/sisterhood!

I'll be speaking at Ijams Nature Center tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. and again next week at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge on Thursday at 1 p.m. about the "Making of Audubon's Birds of America," a most Herculean endeavor, the warp and weft of legend.

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