Booby Gannet (Sula fusca), Volume 3, Plate 207
The adult featured was procured on an expedition to the Dry Tortugas, May 14, 1832. In the background one of the Florida Keys, drawn by the Swiss-born landscape painter George Lehman.
The plate shows the simple elegance of Audubon’s classic designs. Featuring a bird on branch-amply familiar from the history of ornithological illustration-Audubon expertly turns the bird’s head, thus effectively counterbalancing the leftward diagonal indicated by the bird’s body and the dead tree on which it rests. His eye firmly resting on the viewer, the bird seems to be asking that his imperial posture be duly admired. The precise rendering of the booby’s webbed bright yellow feet is enhanced by the dull color of the branch on which it sits. Audubon’s essay on the bird includes a rant against people who associate stupidity-rather than ignorance of humans-with the booby. According to Audubon, “the word ‘stupid’ is utterly inapplicable to any bird with which I am acquainted.” In fact the boobies of the Tortugas had “become so knowing” that no one of Audubon’s hunting party-except Audubon, of course-could come near them. Audubon’s essay is mostly a story of how he procured the specimens he needed; one of the uncanniest features of these birds-in Audubon’s report-is the silence they maintain even in extreme situations (i.e., when their life is in danger).
From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography
As [the boobies] approached, we laid ourselves as flat as possible in the sand, and although none of them alighted, we attained our object, for in a couple of hours we procured thirty individuals of both sexes and of different ages, finding little difficulty in bringing them down as they flew over us at a moderate height. The wounded birds that fell on the ground made immediately for the water, moving with more ease than I had expected from the accounts usually given of the awkward motions of these birds on the land. Those which reached the water swam off with great buoyancy, and with such rapidity, that it took much rowing to secure some of them, while most of those that fell directly into the sea with only a wing broken, escaped. The island was covered with their dung, the odour of which extended to a considerable distance leeward. In the evening of the same day we landed on another island, named after the Noddy, and thickly covered with bushes and low trees, to which thousands of that species of Tern resort for the purpose of breeding. There also we found a great number of Boobies. They were perched on the top-branches of the trees, on which they had nests, and here again we obtained as many as we desired. They flew close over our heads, eyeing us with dismay but in silence; indeed, not one of these birds ever emitted a cry, except at the moment when they rose from their perches or from the sand.