OUTDOOR CORNER: AUDUBON PAINTS PICTURE OF THE PAST

Do you recognize the name Audubon? I'll wager that you do.

Perhaps you associate it with birding, field guides, or even nature conservation. But do you associate Audubon with this region? You should!

John J. Audubon traveled the Mississippi River a great deal. He has become part of the history of our area and even painted one of his masterpieces in the lowlands of southeast Missouri. Take a trip with John Audubon and find out how he saw this area.

Audubon traveled a lot over North America. Big rivers were a common route for him, with the Mississippi as a frequent waterway. Audubon had a cabin in Kentucky. It is from there that he recorded notes about the 1811 earthquake that shook the Midwest.

Before the quake, his horse gives him difficulty and he writes, "...{I} would have sprang from his back had a minute more elapsed, but at that instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from their very roots, the ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas, as I too plainly discovered that all this awful commotion in nature was the result of an earthquake."

Descriptions like his give insight to how severe the quaking was.

Audubon was a gifted artist and painted many of North America's birds and mammals.

While on a keel boat traveling down the Mississippi River, Audubon stopped at Grand Prairie near East Prairie. There he saw what he called a brown-headed eagle. He wanted to paint the eagle. Thus he began like he did with all of his bird paintings; he got his firearm and began firing.

Audubon needed his birds to sit still in order to paint them. Live birds failed to cooperate and Audubon found that dead birds wired into position made excellent subjects. He bagged this brown-headed eagle and had no sooner retrieved it when he saw a white-headed eagle that he could shoot as well. Unknown to Audubon, both eagles were just two age classes of the same bird: the bald eagle. Today you can see this image in any collection of his paintings. The eagle was originally painted eating a snow goose. Editors coaxed Audubon to repaint the picture with a catfish as prey, saying it would have greater appeal.

Dead birds were skinned and stuffed, when art uses were complete. Some of Audubon's birds can be found in the museum in Ste. Genevieve. Audubon often visited Ste. Genevieve due to a business deal he had with Ferdinand Rozier. Rozier may be a familiar name to long-time residents of Southeast Missouri. Stores bearing Rozier's name were initiated, in part, by John Audubon in Kentucky and Missouri. History records that Audubon was a pitiful businessman and was not a huge benefit to the store. His mind was constantly on nature.

While traveling up the frozen Mississippi River, Audubon camped somewhere in Mississippi County, located in Missouri. There he recorded a sight lost to us today, " ...while on the ice that now covered the broad stream rested flocks of swans, to surprise which the hungry wolves were at times seen to make energetic but unsuccessful efforts."

The swans were common in Audubon's time but are a rare sight today. The wolves he described were red wolves and are now considered endangered species with none living in the wild of Missouri.

Audubon recorded other such animals that can no longer be seen. Passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets and ivory-bill woodpeckers are three birds he wrote about and painted.

Audubon reports on a flock of Carolina parakeets feeding on grain stock, "Flocks of these birds ... cover them so entirely, that they present to the eye the same effect as if a brilliantly colored carpet had been thrown over them."

In describing the passenger pigeon he writes, "The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow ... pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession."

John visited southeastern United States swamp lands and did not hide his initial ill feeling towards them. These were once common to Missouri's Bootheel, Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky.

"I have visited the favorite resort of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, those deep morasses overshadowed by millions of gigantic, dark, moss-covered cypresses which seem to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties ahead. If he persists in venturing farther into these almost inaccessible recesses, he must follow for miles a tangle of massive trunks of fallen, decaying trees, huge projecting branches, and thousands of creeping and twining plants of numberless species!"

Obviously his attitude toward swamps changed some because he investigated them frequently after that and seemed to have made peace with the difficulties. He even settled on a farm near one and trekked through it often.

Audubon roamed this area writing about and painting what he saw. Audubon's love for the natural world has inspired many naturalists and has given ecologists a glimpse back in time. He is a highly recognizable name in history, which has been written, in part, in our area.

Audubon's paintings and journals can be found in local libraries. If you want to learn more about the man, let me encourage you to visit your local library or visit a web page dedicated to Audubon's life and work.

A.J. Hendershott is an education consultant with the Missouri Department of Conservation.