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Updated: May 7, 2025
And, with reference to the period at which the power of reproduction is gained, it is a remarkable fact that various birds occasionally breed whilst retaining their immature plumage. I have noticed the following cases in Audubon's 'Ornith. Blyth informs me that certain herons apparently are dimorphic, for white and coloured individuals of the same age may be observed. Blyth and Mr.
Not less exciting and memorable was Audubon's wonderful story of the passenger pigeon, a beautiful bird flying in vast flocks that darkened the sky like clouds, countless millions assembling to rest and sleep and rear their young in certain forests, miles in length and breadth, fifty or a hundred nests on a single tree; the overloaded branches bending low and often breaking; the farmers gathering from far and near, beating down countless thousands of the young and old birds from their nests and roosts with long poles at night, and in the morning driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a hundred miles distant, to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the ground.
The song of the wood-wagtail, he says, consists of a "short succession of simple notes beginning with emphasis and gradually falling." The truth is, they run up the scale instead of down, beginning low and ending in a shriek. Yet considering the extent of Audubon's work, the wonder is the errors are so few.
With this home of Audubon there is associated a memory of the early days of the telegraph. When Samuel F.B. Morse built the first telegraph line to Philadelphia, he had it strung across the river from Fort Lee to the basement of Audubon's house, and there he received the first telegraphic message ever sent to the island of Manhattan.
This brief sketch of Audubon's boyhood shows the predominant traits of his character, his power of observation, the training of the eye and hand, that made him in manhood "the most distinguished of American ornithologists," with so much scientific ardor and perseverance that no expedition seemed dangerous, or solitude inaccessible, when he was engaged in his favorite study.
Audubon's journal, kept during his stay in Edinburgh, is copious, graphic, and entertaining. It is a mirror of everything he saw and felt. Among others he met George Combe, the phrenologist, author of the once famous Constitution of Man, and he submitted to having his head "looked at."
There were no roosting-or breeding-places near our farm, and I never saw any of them until long after the great flocks were exterminated. I therefore quote, from Audubon's and Pokagon's vivid descriptions. "Toward evening," Audubon says, "they depart for the roosting-place, which may be hundreds of miles distant. One on the banks of Green River, Kentucky, was over three miles wide and forty long."
By a little trout brook in a low part of the woods adjoining the clearing, I had a good time pursuing and identifying a number of warblers, the speckled Canada, the black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and Audubon's warbler. The latter, which was leading its troop of young through a thick undergrowth on the banks of the creek where insects were plentiful, was new to me.
Audubon's narrative of a night passed with Boone, and the narratives made by him during the night Extraordinary power of his memory. A period of severe adversity for Colonel Boone now ensued. His aversion to legal technicalities and his ignorance of legal forms were partly the cause of defects in the titles to the lands which he had long ago acquired, improved, and nobly defended.
This is Audubon's account of the meeting: "One fair morning I was surprised by the sudden entrance into our counting room at Louisville of Mr. Alexander Wilson, the celebrated author of the American Ornithology, of whose existence I had never until that moment been apprised. This happened in March, 1810. How well do I remember him as he then walked up to me.
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