Razor-billed Auk (Alca torda), Volume 3, Plate 214

Painted in Labrador on June 18, 1833.

The birds are featured in their spring plumage, drifting in a transparent sea, with cliffs hinted at in the background. Note especially the feet of the male on the right, treading the unrealistically transparent water. Unlike humans, these birds are comfortable both on the surface of the water and under it. While it is scientifically useful to give viewers a glimpse of a bird’s feet, Audubon also relished the stagey quality of the image he had created. The female’s body on the left, tail pointed upwards at the sky, corresponds in outline to the massive rock in the background on the right. These birds are both part of and apart from a landscape. The only speck of strong color in this plate is the inside view of the female’s bill we get-Audubon’s way of drawing our attention to this extraordinary organ (whose structure he describes in great detail in the corresponding essay, from the white lines across the mandible to the “decurved” tip). Audubon characterizes the inside of the mouth as “gamboge-yellow,” a word rare enough to attract the same kind of attention that the coloring of the inside of the bird’s mouth does in the plate. “Gamboge” is the gum-resin obtained from the Garcinia or “monkey-fruit,” an exotic tree native to countries like Siam and the source of a bright yellow pigment used by painters. Audubon likes to represent his birds with their beaks open, asking the viewer to imagine sound where there is only silence. Conversely, he is also forcing us to realize the extent to which art silences nature, stifling the cries of birds in a fashion similar to that of the hunter or killer of birds.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

Winding up the basin toward the north-east, Captain Emery, myself, and some sailors, all well armed, proceeded one day along the high and precipitous shores to the distance of about four miles, and at last reached the desired spot. We landed on a small rugged island. Our men were provided with long poles, having hooks at their extremities. These sticks were introduced into the deep and narrow fissures, from which we carefully drew the birds and eggs. One place, in particular, was full of birds; it was a horizontal fissure, about two feet in height, and thirty or forty yards in depth. We crawled slowly into it, and as the birds affrighted flew hurriedly past us by hundreds, many of their eggs were smashed. The farther we advanced, the more dismal did the cries of the birds sound in our ears. Many of them, despairing of effecting their escape, crept into the surrounding recesses. Having collected as many of them and their eggs as we could, we returned, and glad were we once more to breathe the fresh air. No sooner were we out than the cracks of the sailors’ guns echoed among the rocks. Rare fun to the tars, in fact, was every such trip, and, when we joined them, they had a pile of Auks on the rocks near them. The birds flew directly towards the muzzles of the guns, as readily as in any other course, and therefore it needed little dexterity to shoot them.