Born
this date in 1785 was John James Audubon, US naturalist and artist,
famous for his book about Birds. 10 facts about him:
He
was born in what is now Haiti. He was the illegitimate son of a
French naval officer/plantation owner, Jean Audubon, and a
chambermaid named Jeanne Rabin, who died soon after he was born. He
was given the name Jean Rabin.
In
1791, his father had him and another illegitimate sibling, taken to France so he could formally adopt them. His name was changed to
Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon.
At
the age of 18, his father sent him to America to avoid being
conscripted into Napoleon’s army. He changed his name again to
make it sound more English, thus becoming John James Audubon.
He
opened a shop in Louisville, Kentucky with a partner, Ferdinand
Rozier. One fateful day a famous ornithologist of the time called
Alexander Wilson visited the shop looking for funding for his book,
American Ornithology. Apparently authors would, at this time, ask
members of the public for money in a kind of old-fashioned kind of
crowd funding. Wilson showed the shopkeepers his drawings, whereupon
Rozier commented, in French, that Audubon could draw much better.
Hence, they didn’t invest. Wilson never finished his book, but
Audubon was inspired to write and illustrate one himself. He was
duly snubbed by Wilson’s fans and supporters, making it impossible
for him to publish there, so he turned his attention to Europe.
At
first, it didn’t look as if he’d meet much success there either.
This time the reason was that Audubon’s paintings were deemed too large to be turned into a book. Measuring about 39.5 x 26.5 inches,
he was told the resulting book would be too large to fit on a table.
However, he didn’t give up and returned to the bookseller with
samples of his drawings, and won him over. The book got published,
with 435 engraved and hand-coloured plates. Should you have one of
these rare first editions in your attic, it could sell for $10
million.
He
was one of the first people to put bands on birds in order to study
their migration. He put silver thread on around the legs of Eastern
phoebes and found two of the birds returning the following year
still sported the threads.
Some
of his other experiments started a huge controversy in the birding
world. He decided to test out whether Vultures had a keen sense of
smell. He’d do things like create a dummy dead animal stuffed with
grass and found the birds went for that and not the putrefying
carcass he’d hidden close by. Some ornithologists supported him
but others didn’t and there was a great schism between “nosarians”
who believed vultures used their sense of smell, and
“anti-nosarians” who believed they used sight and had no sense
of smell to speak of. Even Charles Darwin got involved and conducted
experiments of his own.
Audubon
is credited with discovering around 25 species and 12 subspecies of
American bird, but at the same time, some of his paintings are of
birds that don’t seem to exist in nature. There are five: the
carbonated swamp warbler, Cuvier’s kinglet, Townsend’s finch (or
Townsend’s bunting), small-headed flycatcher, and blue mountain
warbler, that have only ever been seen in his drawings. Today’s
scientists believe these must have been hybrids or mutants.
The
Audubon Society was actually nothing to do with him. It was started
after he died, by George Bird Grinnell, who, as a child, had been
taught by Audubon’s widow, Lucy. He had great respect for Lucy and
named his society and its magazine after her. However, the society
folded in around 1889. It was revived a few years later in 1896 by
two Boston women, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and her cousin Minna B.
Hall. They’d been horrified to learn that birds were routinely
killed for the feathers to make ladies’ hats. They pledged never
to wear hats with feathers and persuaded others to do so. Similar
conservation societies sprang up in other parts of America and
eventually combined to become the National Audubon Society in 1940.
This society still exists and concentrates on scientific
conservation and education to protect birds.
It
is somewhat ironic, therefore, when you consider how John James
Audubon himself produced his paintings. He would shoot the birds
first and prop up the carcasses with wire into natural poses.
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