Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: John James Audubon, Bird Art, ornithology, birds, avian, New York Historical Society, endangered species

Do you remember the first time you ever saw a particular bird species: how the light caressed its feathers, adding fiery depth to color; its innate busyness as it searched for careless insects or plump fruits, or its fierce hope as it courted future mates; the rich sound of its voice as it spoke volumes to its companions; the intense flash of life in its gleaming eyes when it caught sight of you huddled behind your 'scope or binoculars, holding your breath, wishing this singular moment would never end; that special sound of wings snapping through the air as it took flight, leaving you behind, suddenly alone, feet rooted into the moist soil like bricks, while your parched soul rose up alongside?

Endangered and extinct species are especially affecting and paintings of these birds, especially those rendered while they were still in this world, can trigger intense emotions, as most people will learn when they attend the New-York Historical Society's annual springtime exhibition of artist John James Audubon's artwork; "Audubon's Aviary". [NOTE: click on thumbnail images for larger view of that image in its own window].

This year's exhibition highlights birds that once flourished in American landscapes and soared through our nation's skies but are now either declining, threatened with extinction, or are gone forever. These paintings, which the artist sold individually by subscription throughout the 1830s and collected into his seminal tome, Birds of America, also served to increase awareness and appreciation for the native birds and wildlife of North America. Unfortunately, for some birds, such as the Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis (pictured above), this appreciation arrived too late.

But thanks to Audubon, brief glimpses of these extinct birds have been captured in watercolor for people like me, who never had the priviledge of seeing these birds alive. If you cannot easily see the detail in each painting, there are some large magnifying glasses at the door that you can borrow. To add to the magic of this experience, some bird portraits in this exhibition include recorded calls for that particular species provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. These recordings are activated to play by the viewer's body movements. Another multi-media supplement was a separate, very large, framed "picture" that featured film clips of 14 species featured in the displayed portraits. I have chosen to discuss some of the species that can never be featured in these, or any, film clips.

The extinct great auk (the original penguin, although it is not related to any currently living penguins), Pinguinus impennis, has the distinction of being the last flightless bird found anywhere in North America. Audubon never saw this species alive and curiously, he never finished this painting; leaving one leg outlined but unpainted, on the bird on the left.

There is evidence from human middens that historically, this species once ranged as far south as parts of Florida, although hunting pressure from humans caused the bird's range to contract to include just those islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland and Great Britain. Although graceful in water, great auks were slow and clumsy on land, and unafraid of humans, which made them easy targets for insatiable human appetites. The last pair of great auks, discovered while incubating an egg on a small island near Iceland, were killed on 3 July 1844, for a museum collection.

Audubon's beautiful painting of the lovely Esquimaux (Eskimo or Northern) Curlew, Numenius borealis, is sadly prescient, since this is the only picture where one of his main subjects is dead. In this portrait, the dead female lies on her back in the foreground, one wing open, while the male looks at her with what appears to be astonishment.

The Esquimaux curlew is currently classified as either critically endangered -- with a population estimated at no more than 50 individuals -- or more likely, extinct. This elegant shorebird was a long-distance migrant that annually flew 20,000 miles or more from southern Argentina stopping on the Great Plains to refuel before moving on to the northwestern tundra to breed. Its population was decimated by an astonishing level of hunting where as many as two million birds were killed in a single year. The pressure from hunting was probably amplified by the extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust, its primary food source during migration. The Esquimaux curlew, once one of the most numerous of all North American shorebirds, is often mistaken for the still extant, but noticeably larger, Whimbrel (Hudsonian curlew), Numenius phaeopus, which adds confusion to attempts to determine if this species still exists. The last confirmed sighting of the Esquimaux curlew was in 1963, in the Barbados.

Because there were between 3 and 5 billion living passenger pigeons -- 25 to 40 per cent of the total bird population of the United States -- at the time that Europeans discovered America, the passenger (wild) pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, is probably the most famous of North America's sad saga of extinct birds. Audubon's portrait features the female leaning down to feed the male, demonstrates the artist's ability to capture iridescent feathering on the birds' necks using watercolors.

The passenger pigeon's survival strategy is legendary and is also used by many migratory African mammals; by forming huge groups of hundreds of thousands of individuals, the species was rendered invulnerable to damages inflicted by wild predators. Nevertheless, the cause of this species' extinction was human hunting, although it is thought that this bird would probably have succumbed eventually due to rampant clearing of East Coast oak forests to establish farms. But echoes of the loss of passenger pigeons still reverberate today because its extinction probably exacerbated the proliferation of Lyme disease. When the passenger pigeons existed in large numbers, they subsisted primarily on acorns. However, since there are no pigeons to eat acorns, Eastern deer mice -- the main reservoir of Lyme disease -- increased their populations far beyond historic levels as they exploited this unexpected food bonanza.

Audubon's knowledge of bird social behavior is demonstrated by a small group of playful and curious Carolina parakeets (parrot or conure), Conuropsis carolinensis, that he captured as they romped on their primary foodplant, the invasive cocklebur. The rapid movement of the birds' bodies through the vegetation is apparent from the different lifelike poses and the birds' inquisitive nature is revealed by those individuals that are looking directly at the viewer. I was especially enthralled and saddened by their feather texture and coloring -- the birds seem so real and touchable, so near, and yet so far away. I was also surprised to learn that this parrot had 14 tail feathers -- all living parrots have 12 tail feathers with the exception of the Mount Arfak (Alpine or Whiskered) Lory, Oreopsittacus arfaki, native to the mountains of New Guinea. (This note has no significance whatsoever except to alert you to the amazing amount of useless bird trivia that is embedded somewhere inside my brain).

For aficionados of parrots, like me, the senseless loss of the Carolina parakeet is an added insult in the long and sordid history of wanton human disregard for all life forms. The extinction of the Carolina parakeet resulted from loss of its forested habitat to farmers who also shot the gregarious birds as agricultural pests combined with hunting for their colorful plumage that was used as decorations on womens' hats and for the pet trade (unfortunately, parrot owners of the past were not as enlightened as those today, so even though these birds bred easily in captivity, a captive breeding population was never established). But the final blow to the last seemingly healthy although tiny remnant of these, the only native parrot in North America, was probably due to the parrots succumbing to a disease found in captive poultry.

Several North American avian success stories were also included in this exhibition, most notably, the California Condor, Gymnogyps californianus. Interestingly, this is the only painting in the New-York Historical Society's Audubon collections that was not purchased directly from Audubon's widow. This bird, the largest vulture in North America, was nearly lost after its already small population declined dramatically in the 19th century due to poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction. Federal laws and eventually a conservation program were finally enacted to protect this species, whose numbers increased from an all-time low of only 9 individuals to 302 birds as of November 2007.

Another conservation success story is that of the beautiful brown pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis, which was nearly lost to eggshell thinning caused by pesticides like DDT and dieldrin. I thought that Audubon did a beautiful job capturing this bird in watercolor by using graphite over the solid regions of watercolor to provide added texture to this bird's plumage -- a subtle detail you will never see on any reproduction.

This exhibition also featured several of Audubon's sketches and paintings of people, which were useful in improving his observational skills and speed. Several books that Audubon illustrated with dissected birds, including a woodpecker (dissections of these birds are utterly fascinating), are also included in this exhibition.

The New-York Historical Society is the largest single repository of Auduboniana in the world. Besides cataloguing a variety of Audubon's personal effects, they hold 435 of Audubon's watercolors that were preparatory for 433 of the 435 plates in The Birds of America (1827-1838). Unfortunately, no original watercolors for plates 84 and 155 are known to exist. Because of the vulnerability of these paintings to the damaging effects of light, each one of these 435 works are exhibited for only a short period of time once in every ten years. Forty paintings were displayed this year, along with other drawings and books that are relevant to Audubon's life and work. The exhibition runs from 8 February to 16 March 2008 at the New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (SW corner of Central Park West and 77th street), New York, NY 10024.