The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), Volume 1, Plate 1

Painted on Beech Woods Plantation, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, around 1825. One of Lucy Audubon’s students recalls that the bird he shot weighed 28 pounds. “Audubon pinned it up on the wall and spent several days sketching it… till it rotted and stank—I hated to lose so much good eating.”

Like Benjamin Franklin, Audubon wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the United States of America, rather than the Bald Eagle (an admittedly better-looking bird that nevertheless cowardly steals food from others). In the plate, the stateliness of the turkey, which was also featured in Audubon’s personal seal (with the caption, “America My Country”), is offset by the small pile of excrement in the lower left corner. The bird’s massive body dominates the composition, while its smallish head and curved neck echo the more fragile botanicals in the background. The strong diagonal marked by the bird’s back contrasts with the stalk of sugar cane leaning the other way (cropped by the frame of the picture to increase the illusion). Audubon’s choice of the turkey as the subject of the first plate makes a powerful programmatic statement about his plans for Birds of America. It suggests that the human and the avian world are connected in multiple ways: birds are symbolic of human and political aspirations (and may even consent to being pets), but they are also human food. Throughout Birds of America, Audubon, catering to the hunters among his subscribers, meticulously records the taste of birds as he is eating his way through the American ornithological landscape.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

While at Henderson, on the Ohio, I had, among many other wild birds, a fine male Turkey, which had been reared from its earliest youth under my care, it having been caught by me when probably not more than two or three days old. It became so tame that it would follow any person who called it, and was the favourite of the little village. Yet it would never roost with the tame Turkeys, but regularly betook itself at night to the roof of the house, where it remained until dawn. When two years old, it began to fly to the woods, where it remained for a considerable part of the day, to return to the enclosure as night approached. It continued this practice until the following spring, when I saw it several times fly from its roosting place to the top of a high cotton-tree, on the bank of the Ohio, from which, after resting a little, it would sail to the opposite shore, the river being there nearly half a mile wide, and return towards night. One morning I saw it fly off, at a very early hour, to the woods, in another direction, and took no particular notice of the circumstance. Several days elapsed, but the bird did not return. I was going towards some lakes near Green river to shoot, when, having walked about five miles, I saw a fine large gobbler cross the path before me, moving leisurely along. Turkeys being then in prime condition for the table, I ordered my dog to chase it, and put it up. The animal went off with great rapidity, and as it approached the Turkey, I saw, with great surprise, that the latter paid little attention. Juno was on the point of seizing it, when she suddenly stopped, and turned her head towards me. I hastened to them, but you may easily conceive my surprise when I saw my own favourite bird, and discovered that it had recognised the dog, and would not fly from it; although the sight of a strange dog would have caused it to run off at once. A friend of mine happening to be in search of a wounded deer, took the bird on his saddle before him, and carried it home for me.