The Foolish Guillemots (Uria Troile), Volume 3, Plate 218

Painted on June 20, 1833 in Labrador.

The two Guillemots (Common Murres) are shown in breeding plumage, against the background of an ocean that has the transparency of a Japanese woodblock print. The birds’ delicately shaded wings show that, for an artist like Audubon, black is never simply black, while the tongue lolling inside the beak of the bird on the right makes us imagine sound. The characteristic bar over the Murres’ eyes does give them a slightly comical appearance. But the satire is more than offset by the gruesome content of the essay on the Murre, with its report of a particularly destructive visit to the Murre Rocks near Macatina Harbor, Labrador. As it turns out, the Guillemots foolishness consists in simply not realizing how destructive human beings are by returning to their breeding places year after year. Sobered by his experience of Labrador, Audubon himself admitted in a rare moment of honest introspection: “This war of extermination cannot last many years more.”

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

Not far from Great Macatina Harbour lie the Murre Rocks, consisting of several low islands, destitute of vegetation, and not rising high from the waters. There thousands of Guillemots annually assemble in the beginning of May, to deposit each its single egg, and raise its young. As you approach these islands, the air becomes darkened with the multitudes of birds that fly about; every square foot of the ground seems to be occupied by a Guillemot planted erect as it were on the granite rock, but carefully warming its cherished egg. All look toward the south, and if you are fronting them, the snowy white of their bodies produces a very remarkable effect, for the birds at some distance look as if they were destitute of head, so much does that part assimilate with the dark hue of the rocks on which they stand. On the other hand, if you approach them in the rear, the isle appears as if covered with a black pall.

Now land, and witness the consternation of the settlers! Each affrighted leaves its egg, hastily runs a few steps, and launches into the air in silence. Thrice around you they rapidly pass, to discover the object of your unwelcome visit. If you begin to gather their eggs, or, still worse, to break them, in order that they may lay others which you can pick up fresh, the Guillemots all alight at some distance, on the bosom of the deep, and anxiously await your departure. Eggs, green and white, and almost of every colour, are lying thick over the whole rock; the ordure of the birds mingled with feathers, with the refuse of half-hatched eggs partially sucked by rapacious Gulls, and with putrid or dried carcasses of Guillemots, produces an intolerable stench; and no sooner are all your baskets filled with eggs, than you are glad to abandon the isle to its proper owners.