Audubon Bird Cards

     I am quite sure that John James Audubon would be staggered to know the ways his name has been used in the furtherance of avian conservation. The mere mention of the word Audubon conjures up a universal mission to preserve species and habitat, and to engage the public through education, publicity and fund-raising campaigns.

     A couple of years ago a friend of mine was attending an auction and saw a boxed set of Audubon Bird Cards and picked them up for me.

     The set has obviously been well used, but the cards remain in remarkably good condition. Several are missing from the set (numbers 11, 12, 13, 18, 22, 24 and 47), not surprising I suppose after almost fifty years in circulation.

     The cards are quite lovely; the illustrations accurate and deftly done. You will appreciate this from the few that I have photographed, while simultaneously ignoring my status as a complete duffer as a photographer. You will also please forgive the clutter on my desk!

     I confess that it's past the time to dust my shelves and do a little housework in my office!

     The cards do not seem to be specifically aimed at children, although I suspect that they were a target audience. The descriptions are quite lyrical at times, but the authors do not shy away from controversy, as revealed by the following comments on the Mallard card above.

     "However, its wholesale slaughter by market hunters, together with the extensive drainage of lakes, ponds, sloughs and marshlands, which constitute its breeding and feeding haunts, have served greatly to reduce its numbers."

     Little has changed today.

     A Pintail is an elegant duck, lauded on the card in picturesque fashion.

     "Its slender neck and graceful lines, which in the male are accentuated by a long spike of a tail and delicate markings of grey and white, serve to give an air of distinction to this well known member of the family."

     The splendour of a Wood Duck speaks for itself. The card refers to other waterfowl as "its plebian relatives!"

     Killdeer is without doubt the plover most familiar to even casual observers, many of who even recognize its distinctive call.

     For those like me, interested in the arcane world of systematics and classification, it is interesting to note the changes in taxonomy that have occurred over the years as new techniques, especially molecular testing, have been developed. Killdeer in 1974 was known by the scientific name Oxyechus vociferous (should read vociferus; the card is in error); subsequently it was assigned to the genus Charadrius and is now known as Charadrius vociferus.

     The card depicts a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a name that often elicits giggles from children.

     I am very much enamoured of the following line in the description.

     "Beetles, wasps, ants, midges and flies fall an easy prey to this tapper of trees who doesn't even have to move out of his tracks to catch them."

     Who does not thrill to the sight or the sound of a Common Loon?

     ".....its wild and reverberating cries may be heard at all hours and might well seem to personify some lonely spirit in distress."

     I am delighted to have this set of cards, and can only conjecture how many people may have gotten their introduction to birds and to nature from them.

     Years ago I owned several sets of cigarette cards which also depicted aspects of nature. I remember that one set covered trees and another wildflowers. If my memory serves me well these cards originated in the UK and depicted species found there. I am not sure what happened to them, but I wish that I had them now.

     It is more than a little interesting to see how attempts were made to present nature to people, in the hope no doubt that they would be motivated to save it. Sadly it seems not to have worked. Despite all the evidence that a healthy, functioning predator/prey relationship is key to a healthy ecosystem, we are once again, in North America and in Europe embarking on sanctioned kills of top predators that are not quite convenient for us.

     We have not learned our lesson and I fear we never will.