Passenger pigeon and warblers.
Passenger pigeon and warblers. Hand colored engraving (reproduction), after a drawing by Alexander Wilson.
From Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology, vol. 5, reproduced in: Shepard Keith’s Spirits of the Air (Athens, Ga., 2009).
James Bowdoin III died in 1811 before Wilson’s American Ornithology had been completely published, so this later volume, which includes the print of the passenger pigeon, was never a part of his library.
Wilson’s image of the wild pigeon, which he called “a very interesting species,” features the long-tailed bird gripping a stump with its claws. It gave rise to innumerable variations and copies over the next one hundred years.
Wilson’s design appeared in later ornithology texts (Thomas Nuttall’s Manual of the Ornithology of the United States, 1832), children’s books (The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds, first published in 1851 by William Crosby and H.P. Nichols), and reminiscences, such as Samuel G. Goodrich’s from 1856, included in this exhibition.