
John James Audubon (1785-1851)
Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis), Havell plate no. 208, 1833
Watercolor, graphite, pastel, gouache, and black ink with scratching out and selective glazing on paper, laid on card; 14 5/8 x 20 15/16 in. (37.1 x 53.2 cm)
Purchased for the Society by public subscription from Mrs. John J. Audubon, 1863.17.208
Until the 1870s, immense flocks of Eskimo Curlews migrating through the Canadian Maritime provinces and New England fattened up on blueberries and fruits before heading to South America (grasshoppers when heading north). Despite its vast numbers, the species was decimated in a 20-year-period and was rarely seen after 1890. Although its last confirmed sighting in the United States was in 1962 in Galveston, Texas, with two unconfirmed reportings in 1981, the Eskimo Curlew is most certainly extinct. After Passenger Pigeons disappeared, market hunters targeted the Eskimo Curlew; with its habitats nearly obliterated by cultivation, the extinction of the Eskimo Curlew’s primary spring food, the Rocky Mountain locust, put the nail in the coffin. If a population still exists, it is very small and highly susceptible to a single catastrophic event. Continued habitat alteration in areas once used as migratory stopovers and mining and petroleum extraction in arctic breeding grounds are also a threat to remaining individuals. Currently, the Eskimo Curlew is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Audubon painted this somewhat bizarre, if not prophetic, representation in Labrador. He depicted the female dead, while its mate regards it with incredulity, just as humans confront dead members of their species. The work is the sole instance in which Audubon portrayed a dead bird that is not the prey of another. His watercolor is disturbingly prescient and poignant, although Audubon may have been motivated to render this pose in order to display the coloration of the inside of the specimen’s wing.

John James Audubon (1785-1851) and Maria Martin (1796-1863)
Bachman’s Warbler (Vermivora bachmanii), Study for Havell pl. 185, 1833 EXTINCT ?
Watercolor, graphite, gouache, and black ink with scratching out on paper, laid on card; 21 1/8 x 13 13/16 in. (53.7 x 35.1 cm)
Purchased for the Society by public subscription from Mrs. John J. Audubon, 1863.17.185
[with Maria Martin]