![]() ![]() There is an imposing monument in his honor at the cemetery, which is the center of the Heritage Rose District of NYC.Īudubon's influence on ornithology and natural history was far reaching. Audubon is buried, close to the location of his home, at 155th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. In 1848, he manifested signs of senility, his "noble mind in ruins." He died at his family home on January 27, 1851. He wrote, "y heart was sorely heavy, for scarcely had I enough to keep my dear ones alive and yet through these dark days I was being led to the development of the talents I loved."Īudubon made some excursions out West where he hoped to record Western species he had missed, but his health began to fail. The little money he earned was from drawing portraits, particularly death-bed sketches, greatly esteemed by country folk before photography. Audubon identified 25 new species.Īfter 1819, Audubon went bankrupt and was thrown into jail for debt. His major work, a color-plate book entitled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats. John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques Audubon) (Ap– January 27, 1851) was a French American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. This short work is part of Applewood's "American Roots" series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America's most famous writers and thinkers. The last known individual was a female named Martha, who died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Indeed, after having viewed them so often, and under so many circumstances, I even now feel inclined to pause, and assure myself that what I am going to relate is fact." Most astonishing of all is the fact that the passenger pigeon became extinct in the wild by 1900. As he writes of a flock numbering more than one billion birds, a flock so large it darkens the noonday sky, Audubon says, "The multitudes of Wild Pigeons in our woods are astonishing. In it, Audubon describes the bird's remarkable power of flight, power of vision, and hard-to-believe abundance. The five-volume Ornithological Biography, a companion to the collection of drawings, was published in 1831 and includes this essay on the now-extinct passenger pigeon. The great American naturalist John James Audubon is best known for his beautiful drawings of birds, collected in The Birds of America (1827-1838).
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