Birds of America: J.J. Audubon

Birds of America: J.J. Audubon

The bird population in the US has several species named after J.J. Audubon: Audubon’s Shearwater, Audubon’s Warbler and Audubon’s Oriole, for example. Many bird names are on the chopping block in 2024-2026 because of an upheaval in the American Ornithological Society (known by its initials: AOS). The impending changes are due to more than simple naming conventions.

More Than Bird Names

The National Audubon Society faces a backlash after deciding to keep its name which, according to publications “evokes a racist enslaver.” John J. Audubon may have inspired generations of birders with his Birds of America compendium, but his legacy also includes racist views. He is now known to have owned and sold enslaved people, and to have robbed graves of Native Americans for brain-size measurement to prove inferior intelligence, all of which is bringing calls for the National Audubon Society to change its name.[1]

J.J. Audubon: Genius or Fraud?

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America. Alexander Wilson has that distinction and for it George Ord named Wilson as the Father of American Ornithology. However, for half a century he was this young country’s dominant wildlife artist. His seminal elephant folio The Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and it is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Allen Sibley, are measured.

It’s fair to describe John James Audubon as a genius and a pioneer. His contributions to ornithology, art, and culture are enormous. At the same time he was a fabulist. More specifically he is now known as someone whose actions reflected a dominant white man’s view in his pursuit of scientific knowledge, and he was a complex and troubling character who did despicable things even by the standards of his day. He was contemporaneously and posthumously accused of both academic fraud and plagiarism. But far worse, he enslaved Black people and wrote critically about emancipation. He was accused of stealing human remains and sending the skulls of those he disinterred to a colleague who used them to assert that whites were superior to non-whites.

Complicating this history is his ambiguous background: Some researchers have credibly argued that Audubon was born to a woman of mixed race, which would mean that the most famous American bird artist was a man of color. Others insist that Audubon’s mother was white. Audubon himself lied about the circumstances of his birth, claiming to have been born in Louisiana. Whatever his circumstances of his birth, his beliefs and actions speak for themselves.

The Origin of the Audubon Society

Audubon died decades before the first Audubon societies were founded, so how did National Audubon Society come to bear his name? A naturalist named George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Bakewell Audubon, John James Audubon’s widow. George Grinnell chose the society’s name because of Audubon’s stature in the world of wildlife art and natural history. The Audubon name was honored and venerated by the Society for the next 175 years.[3] That is until it was not honored any longer.

Audubon: Early Years

John James Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) in 1785, the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and sugar plantation owner. The identity of his mother is in dispute; she could have been a French chambermaid named Jeanne Rabine, but there is compelling evidence that she was a mixed-race housekeeper named Catherine “Sanitte” Bouffard. At the age of five — which coincided with the beginnings of the Haitian Revolution — Audubon was sent to Nantes, France, and was raised by his father’s wife, Anne. There, John James Audubon took an interest in birds, nature, drawing and music.

In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent by his family to America, in part to escape conscription into Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. Audubon lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds. It was there that he met his wife, Lucy Bakewell. While living in Mill Grove, he conducted the first known bird-banding experiment in North America, tying strings around the legs of Eastern Phoebes; he learned that the birds returned to the very same nesting sites each year.

Audubon spent more than a decade as a businessman, traveling down the Ohio River to western Kentucky — then the beginning of the western frontier — and setting up a dry-goods store in Henderson. He continued to draw birds as a hobby, amassing an impressive portfolio. He also bought and sold enslaved people during this time to support his venture. Audubon was successful in business for a while, but hard times hit, and in 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy.

With no other prospects, in the early 1820s Audubon set off to depict America’s avifauna, with nothing but his gun, artist’s materials, and a young assistant. In 1826, he sailed with his partly finished collection to England, where his life-size, highly dramatic bird portraits, along with his embellished descriptions of wilderness life. His portfolio hit just the right note at the height of the Continent’s Romantic era. Audubon found a printer for The Birds of America, first in Edinburgh, then London, and later collaborated with the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray on the bird biographies — life histories of each of the species in the finished work.

The last print was issued in 1838, by which time Audubon had achieved fame and a modest degree of comfort, traveled the country several more times in search of birds. He eventually settled in New York City. He made one more trip out West in 1843, the basis for his final work of mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was largely completed by his sons and the text of which was written by his long-time friend, the Lutheran pastor, John Bachman (another anti-abolitionist, two of whose daughters married two of Audubon’s sons).

Audubon died at age 65. He is buried in the Trinity Cemetery at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City.[1]

Birds depicted throughout Audubon’s Birds of America reflect the once-common practice of naming flora, fauna, and landscape features for the person who “discovered” them. The record of this in Birds of America stands to remind us of the colonialism, racism, and violence that marked the period during which Audubon was collecting and drawing American birds.

While the majority of birds in his books are named with descriptive language that helps identify them (information about their behaviors, as in Hermit Warbler; or about their plumage, as in Black Throated Gray Warbler), some carry the names of slave owners, anti-abolitionists, Confederate generals, US Calvary officers associated with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and “scientists” whose work is now understood to be disreputable, damaging and spurious.

A growing number of scientists and naturalists now advocate for replacing so-called eponymous bird names with descriptive alternatives. Many recommend the removal of all eponymous bird names, regardless of the character or qualities of the individuals for whom birds were named. A comprehensive change, they argue, honors wildlife and natural history over human endeavor and the will to dominate the natural world.

It’s especially hard for life-long birders to imagine calling certain birds, such as Cooper’s Hawks, Swainson’s Hawks, or Wilson’s Warblers for example, by another name. That said there’s a long list of other birds we regularly or occasionally see in the wild whose biologist’s names would likely be changed by the AOS, including the following names in the Appendix A of this Bird Post and in other sources.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Footnotes:

[1] https://johnjames.audubon.org/john-james-audubon-0

[2] https://beineckeaudubon.yale.edu/whats-name-reading-and-resources

[3] https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/explorations/item/4094

The first Audubon Society (1886–1888/89)

In the February 11, 1886 issue of Forest and Stream, its editor George Bird Grinnell urged readers to join him in forming the Audubon Society for the protection of wild birds and their eggs. The society was a response to the mass killing of birds for feathers to decorate women’s hats. Grinnell named it for John James Audubon, whose widow, Lucy, had been his teacher in New York City. Members paid no dues and simply signed a pledge not to harm birds. fundinguniversefundinguniverse

Why it folded: It was a victim of its own success. More than 38,000 people joined in only three months, and Grinnell had neither the time nor the staff at Forest and Stream to handle the extra correspondence and administration, so he disbanded the group in 1888. Some sources date the end to January 1889. A Texas history, for example, says the original society was discontinued that month. The mission of the National Audubon Society is to conserve and restore +2

The revival and the National Audubon Society (1896–present)

In 1896, a group of women appalled by the slaughter of birds formed the Massachusetts Audubon Society. The founders included Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall. Several months later Pennsylvania formed its own society, and by 1899, 15 other states had done the same. In 1905 these state societies joined together as the National Association of Audubon Societies, and the long original title was shortened in 1940 to National Audubon Society. Its early work included lobbying for bird-protection laws and hiring wardens to guard nesting colonies. Its Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, still runs today. The mission of the National Audubon Society is to conserve and restore +3

Has it folded again? No. The National Audubon Society is still active. Over the past few years, though, it has faced a major debate about its name, because Audubon enslaved people and opposed emancipation. In March 2023, the board voted to keep the name. The board chair, Susan Bell, said the decision would let the organization focus on its equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging work. After the decision, three national board members resigned. By Elizabeth Gray, CEO +2

Many local chapters went the other way. These chapters are independent and can choose their own names. Founded as New York City Audubon Society in 1979, the New York chapter was renamed NYC Bird Alliance in 2024 but remains a chapter of National Audubon. Other chapters in California, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Oregon have also adopted “Bird Alliance” names. Massachusetts Audubon and several other state societies are separate organizations, not chapters of the national group.

[4] More about the AOS movement to change bird names:  What’s in A Name? – reading and resources.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Appendix A:

Birds of America with an Audubon influence (or not)

• Bullock’s Oriole (Icterus bullockii). Named by William Swainson in 1827; Audubon painted it.
• Cassin’s Finch (Haemorhous cassinii). Named by Spencer Baird in 1854, after Audubon’s bird work was finished, so it has no direct Audubon connection.
• Clark’s Grebe (Aechmophorus clarkii). Named by George Lawrence in 1858; no Audubon connection.
• Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana). Named by Alexander Wilson in 1811; Audubon painted it from specimens collected by John Kirk Townsend.
• Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii). Named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1828; Audubon painted it.
• Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii). Named by William Gambel in 1843; not in Audubon’s original Birds of America.
• Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis). Named by G. R. Gray in 1849; painted by both Alexander Wilson and Audubon.
• Lincoln’s Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii). Named by Audubon in 1834 for Thomas Lincoln, who collected it on Audubon’s 1833 Canadian expedition to Labrador.
• MacGillivray’s Warbler (Geothlypis tolmiei). Audubon gave it its English name in honor of William MacGillivray, who wrote much of Audubon’s Ornithological Biography. The scientific name comes from John Kirk Townsend, whose 1839 written description came first.
• Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya). Named by Bonaparte in 1825; Audubon painted it.
• Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri). Named by Johann Gmelin in 1788; Audubon painted it.
• Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni). Named by Bonaparte in 1838.
• Townsend’s Solitaire (Myadestes townsendi). Named by Audubon in 1838.
• Williamson’s Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus thyroideus). Named by John Cassin in 1852; no Audubon connection.
• Wilson’s Phalarope (Phalaropus tricolor). Named by Louis Vieillot in 1819; Audubon painted it.
• Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata). Named by George Ord in 1825; Audubon painted it.
• Wilson’s Warbler (Cardellina pusilla). Named by Alexander Wilson in 1811; Audubon painted it.
• Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma woodhouseii). Named by Spencer Baird in 1858; no Audubon connection.
• Of the eighteen birds in this list, only Lincoln’s Sparrow and Townsend’s Solitaire were formally named by Audubon, and he coined the English name for MacGillivray’s Warbler.

Appendix B:

Written Works by J. J. Audubon

• Audubon, John James. “Account of the Habits of the Turkey Buzzard (Vultur aura), Particularly with the View of Exploding the Opinion Generally Entertained of Its Extraordinary Power of Smelling.” Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. 2, 1826–27, pp. 172–84.
• —. Audubon and His Journals. Edited by Maria R. Audubon, 2 vols., New York, 1897.
• —. The Birds of America. 4 vols., London, 1827–38.
• —. The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories. 7 vols., New York and Philadelphia, 1840–44.
• —. “Facts and Observations Connected with the Permanent Residence of Swallows in the United States.” Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New-York, vol. 1, 1824, pp. 166–68.
• —. “Notes on the Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus).” Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 21–30.
• —. Ornithological Biography, or An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America; Accompanied by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work Entitled The Birds of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners. 5 vols., Edinburgh, 1831–39.
• —. A Synopsis of the Birds of North America. Edinburgh, 1839.
• Audubon, John James, and John Bachman. The Quadrupeds of North America. 3 vols., New York, 1849–54.
• —. The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. 3 vols., New York, 1845–54.

Notes on the Appendix Lists Above:

• Audubon’s written works are confirmed from the Pennsylvania Center for the Book: the full title and Edinburgh 1831–39 publication of Ornithological Biography, the 1827–38 London dates for the folio, the swallows article in the Lyceum Annals (1824), and the turkey buzzard and rattlesnake articles in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, including their volume and page numbers. That source lists the folio as Birds of North America, but the correct title is The Birds of America, containing the word The and not specifying North America.
• The folio was first published in installments from 1827 to 1838. William Lizars in Edinburgh engraved the first plates, and Robert Havell Jr. in London finished the work.
• The swallows article’s volume (1, 1824) is confirmed, but the Synopsis page range for the seven-volume octavo Birds of America, and Audubon and His Journals is not confirmed. The Bachman entries match the earlier Bachman lists.
• The turkey buzzard paper is the other half of the vulture-smell debate from the Bachman Bird Post, where Bachman’s experiments backed Audubon. Later naturalists disputed Audubon’s conclusion, and modern research has confirmed that turkey vultures do find food largely by smell.

LINK to List of Bird Names Derived from English Names

Appendix C:

John James Audubon named many birds for friends, patrons and collaborators, and many of those same people helped him make The Birds of America (1827–1838) and its companion text, Ornithological Biography. And although there may be some repeats from the AppendixA above, here are the main figures, grouped by the role they played with Audubon.

Close collaborators with birds named after them

• Rev. John Bachman (Bachman’s Sparrow, Peucaea aestivalis; Bachman’s Warbler, Vermivora bachmanii). A Lutheran minister and naturalist in Charleston, he was probably Audubon’s closest scientific partner. He co-authored The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, and two of his daughters married two of Audubon’s sons.
• Maria Martin (Maria’s Woodpecker, a form later merged into the Hairy Woodpecker, Dryobates villosus). Bachman’s sister-in-law, and later his second wife, she painted botanical and insect backgrounds for several plates.
• Edward Harris (Harris’s Hawk, Parabuteo unicinctus; Harris’s Sparrow, Zonotrichia querula). A wealthy New Jersey farmer, he bought Audubon’s paintings when money was short, funded and joined the 1837 Gulf Coast trip, and went on the 1843 Missouri River expedition.
• William MacGillivray (MacGillivray’s Warbler, Geothlypis tolmiei). A Scottish ornithologist who edited Audubon’s prose and wrote much of the scientific and anatomical material in Ornithological Biography.
• Thomas Lincoln (Lincoln’s Sparrow, Melospiza lincolnii). A young member of the 1833 Labrador expedition who collected the type specimen.
• John Graham Bell (Bell’s Vireo, Vireo bellii). A taxidermist on the 1843 Missouri River trip.
• Isaac Sprague (Sprague’s Pipit, Anthus spragueii). An artist and assistant on the same 1843 expedition with J.G. Bell on the Missouri River.
• Spencer Fullerton Baird (Baird’s Sparrow, Centronyx bairdii). A young correspondent who sent specimens and later became Secretary of the Smithsonian.
• Dr. Richard Harlan (Harlan’s Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis harlani, now treated as a subspecies of the Red-tailed Hawk). A Philadelphia physician and naturalist who backed Audubon when Philadelphia’s scientific establishment was cool toward him.

British and European supporters Audubon honored with bird names

• William Swainson (Swainson’s Warbler, Limnothlypis swainsonii). An English naturalist who reviewed the work favorably early on. The two later fell out.
• John Stevens Henslow (Henslow’s Sparrow, Centronyx henslowii). A Cambridge botanist and Darwin’s mentor, who supported Audubon’s subscription.
• John George Children (Children’s Warbler, Sylvia childrenii, probably an immature Yellow Warbler, Setophaga petechia). A British Museum naturalist who helped Audubon in London’s scientific circles.
• The Rathbone family (Rathbone’s Warbler, Sylvia rathbonia, probably a Yellow Warbler, Setophaga petechia) and William Roscoe (Roscoe’s Yellowthroat, Sylvia roscoe, probably a Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas). These Liverpool patrons launched Audubon into British society in 1826.
• Thomas Stewart Traill (Traill’s Flycatcher, Empidonax traillii, now called the Willow Flycatcher). A Liverpool physician who helped arrange his first exhibitions.
• Prideaux John Selby (Selby’s Flycatcher, Muscicapa selbyi, probably a female Hooded Warbler, Setophaga citrina) and Nicholas Aylward Vigors (Vigors’s Warbler, Sylvia vigorsii, probably a Pine Warbler, Setophaga pinus). Both were British ornithologists of note.
• Thomas Bewick (Bewick’s Wren, Thryomanes bewickii). The celebrated English wood engraver, who befriended Audubon.
• Georges Cuvier (Cuvier’s Kinglet, Regulus cuvieri, never identified). The acclaimed French naturalist who praised Audubon’s work in Paris and helped Audubon win European subscribers to his published books.

Several of these “species” (Rathbone’s, Roscoe’s, Selby’s, Children’s, Vigors’s, Cuvier’s) were later found to be plumages of known birds or mystery birds never seen again.

Others honored with bird names

• Thomas Mayo Brewer (Brewer’s Blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus). A Boston ornithologist and correspondent.
• Gideon B. Smith (Smith’s Longspur, Calcarius pictus). A Baltimore friend of Audubon.
• John L. LeConte (LeConte’s Sparrow, Ammospiza leconteii). A naturalist from the prominent LeConte family.
• John Kirk Townsend and Thomas Nuttall. Their Pacific Northwest collections gave Audubon many western species for his later plates. Townsend’s Warbler (Setophaga townsendi), Townsend’s Solitaire (Myadestes townsendi), and Nuttall’s Woodpecker (Dryobates nuttallii) bear their names, though some of those names were given by other authors.

Key Audubon supporters without birds named for them

• Lucy Bakewell Audubon, his wife. She supported the family as a teacher and governess for years while he traveled and painted.
• Victor Gifford Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon, two of his sons. They managed business affairs and painted backgrounds and later plates.
• Robert Havell Jr. in London engraved and colored nearly all 435 plates of the double-elephant folio.
• William Home Lizars in Edinburgh engraved the first plates for Audubon.
• Joseph Mason and George Lehman painted many plant and landscape backgrounds for Audubon’s bird images.
• Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, encouraged Audubon in Philadelphia in 1824 and urged him to publish in Europe. Bonaparte’s Gull, however, was named by others.
• Robert Jameson and other Edinburgh scientists welcomed him in 1826.
• Alexander Wilson, the “father of American ornithology,” whom Audubon met in Louisville in 1810, and who became a rival rather than a supporter. George Ord and Charles Waterton were outright critics of Audubon, shifting their support strongly toward Wilson.

In 2023 the American Ornithological Society (AOS) announced it would replace English bird names that honor people, so many of the names above are expected to change.