Birds of Masséna
Prince François Victor Masséna and the story behind Anna’s Hummingbird
Spoiler Alert: There are some overly dramaticized versions of the story behind the naming of Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) with rumors of massive avian obsessions by a Prince hoarding 30,000 bird specimen and high society French romances; however, I could find no sound source for these versions. Therefore, I will stick to the facts on one of my favorite hummingbirds.
Anna’s are my favorites for two simple reasons. First, the birds arrive at our water fountain in packs of three or four just at dawn on a daily basis. And Second, they have stuck around all year, even surviving some severe freezes, with our bird feeders as a source of sugar water.
Where to begin? With a name like Anna’s there is bound to be a woman involved. However, the story of the naming of this hummingbird takes some twists and turns.
Bonaparte and Masséna and Audubon
The tale starts with a man who is both a Prince and a Duke in France. His name was François Victor Masséna, and his family called him Victor. He and his brother, Jacques, were the two surviving four children of Marshal André Masséna and Anne Marie Rosalie Lamare (1765 – 1826). André Masséna was one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s most ruthless and rapacious military Marshals. Masséna battled warring opponents of France in Germany, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria and Russia with merciless, bloody success.
When the Napoleonic Wars ended (in 1815), younger son Victor Masséna built one of Europe’s great private bird collections, about 12,500 specimens. The young Duke invited the French naturalist René Lesson to describe and mount the birds, identifing any new species within the bird collection.
Lesson found several new to the world birds, two of them were hummingbirds. He named one hummingbird after the Duke (Rivoli’s Hummingbird) and another after his wife, Duchess Anna Debelle Masséna (Anna’s Hummingbird).
Victor’s wife, Anna, was the daughter of a French general, and entitled the Duchess of Rivoli. She was also a woman with laudable social graces.
What’s a Bird Story without J.J. Audubon in the Plot?
In 1828, John James Audubon visited Paris, seeking subscribers for his book The Birds of America. He sought out like-minded collectors and bird lovers, he met family like Duke and Duchess Masséna on his trip. Audubon later recalled Princess Anna Debelle Masséna as a beautiful, gracious and polite young woman.
Postscript
Was there a secret love affair between the Princess Anna and John Audubon? Again, nothing, except wild speculation, substantiates that idea.
By the way, although there were not 30,000 birds in the Masséna collection, there would soon be a massive collection of over 25,000 birds that was in the works. The timing was such that the Massénas did not have all of them under their roof. The larger sum was curated by an American collector who came after them all.
The Masséna collection (12,500 mounted and named bird specimens) was added to by an avid bird collection named Dr. Thomas B. Wilson (1807-1865). Wilson was an American physician, naturalist, and patron of science who loved birds. He bought the famous Masséna specimens in 1846 and added them to other specimens he had collected over the years. He finally donated and turned over title of the 26,000 birds in his possession to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1860, making for one of the largest ornithological repositories in the world at the time.
Many of the birds that Audubon included in his The Birds of America compendium were already deeply intertwined with the study and classification of many of the same species represented in Masséna/Wilson collections. John James Audubon published The Birds of America as a serial work between 1827 and 1838. The monumental “Double Elephant Folio” project—consisting of 435 life-sized, hand-colored prints—was completed in 1838, when the final plates and fourth volume were delivered to paid subscribers.
