Concrete Ornithology

MY YEAR OF DARWIN (#YEAROFDARWIN)

8 Jan 2014: "I heard Audubon deliver there some interesting discourses on the habits of N.American birds" Darwin autobiography

Darwin's professors would either take students or encourage them to scientific meetings. Publications are the currency of scientific thought and meetings are like the golf outings of science. Deals are made, gossip is exchanged, people are scooped or learn they're about to be (and that is useful too). As a college student Darwin attended a meeting an John James Audubon gave a talk. He must have been famous enough that Darwin didn't think if necessary to include his full name. 

John James Audubon was a celebrated ornithologist during his lifetime and is the namesake of The National Audubon Society. I read one biography of Audubon as a teenager and found him fascinating and I hope to read Richard Rhodes' biography, which I hear is excellent. J.J. Audubon lived in Pennsylvania and there was one of the first banders in North America. He tied a silver thread on an Eastern Phoebe that build a nest on his porch and the bird return to his house the following year. Eastern Phoebes nest throughout eastern North America and winter along the Gulf Coast in winter. Audubon explored North America when there was endemic diphtheria, malaria, and a host of other maladies (but no Lyme or West Nile, either). Audubon produced the over-sized book Birds of North America, wherein birds were painted their actual size. Large birds, like herons, were presented neck bent to fit the pages and small birds were presented with vegetation in the background. I was able to view an original Audubon painting at the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. The paintings are amazing with brilliant colors that I've never seen reproduced in any of the prints. I currently have four prints. Interestingly, these were picked out of the garbage in Miami Beach and passed on to me. Below is one print that I really like. 

Red-shouldered Hawks on a gum tree with Spanish moss. 

Audubon's method was shoot, pose, and paint. It worked. Both Audubon and Birds of North America became famous and Audubon followed this work with a book on mammals.