Mocking Bird (Turdus Polyglottus, Linn.), Volume 1, Plate 21

Painted around 1825. Audubon drew the rattlesnake on Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, on August 25, 1821.

Audubon depicts two pairs of Mocking Birds defending a nest against a timber rattlesnake hidden in a Jessamine vine-a scene that earned him much ridicule from scientific contemporaries. Rattlesnakes occasionally do climb trees, but Audubon misrepresents the position of the animal’s teeth. Note the correspondence between the rattlesnake’s left eye and the eye of the bird that is about to attack the reptile-one of the many images of (nearly) violated sight in Audubon’s work. The snake in the tree conjures up biblical associations, except that here there are several Adams and Eves, and they are putting up a fight.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

Different species of snakes ascend to their nests, and generally suck the eggs or swallow the young; but on all such occasions, not only the pair to which the nest belongs, but many other Mocking Birds from the vicinity, fly to the spot, attack the reptiles, and, in some cases, are so fortunate as either to force them to retreat, or deprive them of life. Cats that have abandoned the houses to prowl about the fields, in a half wild state, are also dangerous enemies, as they frequently approach the nest unnoticed, and at a pounce secure the mother, or at least destroy the eggs or young, and overturn the nest. Children seldom destroy the nests of these birds, and the planters generally protect them. So much does this feeling prevail throughout Louisiana, that they will not willingly permit a Mocking Bird to be shot at any time.