Whooping Crane (Grus Americana), Volume 3, Plate 226

Audubon obtained the specimen depicted from his “good Hunter Gilbert” in New Orleans on November 20, 1821. In April of the same year, he added the small alligators.

The Whooping Crane is the tallest bird of any species. Audubon’s plate exemplifies his struggle to portray even the biggest North American birds life-sized-and the humorous way in which he draws attention to it by having the crane’s wing-feathers, in trompe-l’oeil fashion, stick beyond the frame of the plate. The miniature alligators further serve to emphasize scale in the composition: they are barely longer than the crane’s beak. As so often, Audubon portrays an act of imminent destruction: the baby alligator’s eye is wide open, echoing the shiny, unforgiving eye of its nemesis. Audubon brilliantly explores the similarity between the alligators’ hard little bodies and the crane’s archaic looking, scaly legs. The essay contains an unusually affectionate, observant description of a wounded Whooping Crane Audubon kept as a pet in his yard in Boston. Today the Whooping Crane remains one of the most endangered species in North America, with barely over 400 birds left in the wild.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

I placed [the wounded Crane] in a yard, in company with a beautiful Snow Goose. This was at Boston. It was so gentle as to suffer me to caress it with the hand, and was extremely fond of searching for worms and grubs about the wood pile, probing every hole it saw with as much care and dexterity as an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. It also watched with all the patience of a cat the motions of some mice which had burrows near the same spot, killed them with a single blow, and swallowed them entire, one after another, until they were extirpated. I fed it on corn and garbage from the kitchen, to which were added bits of bread and cheese, as well as some apples. It would pick up the straws intended to keep its feet from being soiled, and arrange them round its body, as if intent on forming a nest. For hours at a time, it would stand resting on one foot in a very graceful posture; but what appeared to me very curious was, that it had a favourite leg for this purpose; and in fact none of my family ever found it standing on the other, although it is probable that this happened in consequence of the mutilation of the wing, the leg employed being that of the injured side. The stump of its amputated wing appeared to be a constant source of trouble, particularly at the approach of the winter: it would dress the feathers about it, and cover it with so much care, that I really felt for the poor fellow. When the weather became intensely cold, it regularly retired at the approach of night under a covered passage, where it spent the hours of darkness; but it always repaired to this place with marked reluctance, and never until all was quiet and nearly dark, and it came out, even when the snow lay deep on the ground, at the first appearance of day. Now and then it would take a run, extend its only wing, and, uttering a loud cry, leap several times in the air, as if anxious to return to its haunts. At other times it would look upwards, cry aloud as if calling to some acquaintance passing high in the air, and again use its ordinary note whenever its companion the Snow Goose sent forth her own signals.