My brother sent this to me yesterday and I thought some on our listserve might
find it interesting as well.
DaveR/Breaks,VA
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary & Marina
To: David& Susan
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 8:14 PM
Subject: Today's birthday boy
Today is the birthday of the man who once wrote, "I feel I am strange to all
but the birds of America": ornithologist and artist John James Audubon (books
by this author), born in Les Cayes in what is now Haiti (1785). Audubon grew up
in France, and when he was 18 years old, his father managed to get him a false
passport to escape the Napoleonic Wars, and he headed to America. Fascinated by
all the new American birds he saw, he began to study them more closely. He
found some Eastern Phoebes nesting in a cave. He had read that they returned to
the same spot to nest every year, and he wanted to test that idea. For days, he
sat in the cave with them and read a book, until they were used to him and let
him approach. He tied string to their legs to identify them, and sure enough,
the next year the same birds were back in the cave. It is the first known
incident of banding birds.
Audubon fell in love with a woman named Lucy Bakewell. Her father objected to
Audubon's lack of career goals and insisted that he find a solid trade before
marriage. So, he opened a general store in Kentucky on the Ohio River, and soon
after, John and Lucy were married. Audubon was a terrible business owner, and
eventually he realized that his best chance for success lay in his birds after
all. Lucy took on the main breadwinner duties by teaching children in their
home, while her husband traveled all over the continent collecting specimens
for his masterpiece, Birds of America (1838). The book was two feet wide and
three feet tall, with 435 life-sized hand-colored plates of birds. It was
extraordinarily expensive to print, and was financed by advance orders as well
as commissioned paintings, exhibitions, and any furs that Audubon was able to
trap and sell on his excursions. But it was a success. One reviewer wrote: "All
anxieties and fears which overshadowed his work in its beginning had passed
away. The prophecies of kind but overprudent friends, who did not understand
his self-sustaining energy, had proved untrue; the malicious hope of his
enemies, for even the gentle lover of nature has enemies, had been
disappointed; he had secured a commanding place in the respect and gratitude of
men."
Sent from my iPhone
