Canvas-backed Duck (Fuligula vallisneria), Volume 4, Plate 301

Audubon painted the bird on the left in 1834 in Baltimore; the other two birds were drawn earlier, in Louisiana in 1821, and pasted down on the sheet. Havell added the view of Baltimore in the background, possibly from a contemporary print.

In this plate, Audubon plays with the contrast between the foreground (the world of the birds going about their business) and the background (the city of Baltimore). Arranging the birds in such a way that they seem to frame the (rather indistinct) view of the distant city, which occupies the center of the image, Audubon ironizes our anthropocentric way of looking: we see Baltimore from a duck’s point of view. Yet in the accompanying essay, Audubon, in the absence of new insights on the natural history of the bird, returns us to the world of humankind, keeping his prose firmly focused on the bird’s culinary value. Canvasbacks—known as Canard Cheval [“duck horse”] in New Orleans—are, he states, excellent food. Audubon even mentions their current market price (two dollars the pair). The birds’ monetary worth has a surprising equivalent in the orgy of measurements inserted into the anatomical description at the end of the essay: “The trachea, when moderately extended, measures 10 inches in length. … Its diameter at the upper part of 4½ twelfths, it gradually contracts to 3½ twelfths, enlarges to 4½ twelfths, and at the distance of 7¼ inches from the upper extremity, forms a dilatation of a about an inch in length.”

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

The range of the celebrated Duck with the history of which I commence the fourth volume of my Biographs, may be considered as limited on the one band by the mouths of the Mississippi, and on the other by the Hudson or North River. Beyond the latter it is rarely seen at any season on our eastern coasts; and this circumstance, conjoined with its being now and then observed on the upper waters of our Western Districts, and its breeding in great numbers on the borders of Bear River, which flows into the salt lake of Timpanajoz in upper California, as well as in the marshes and along the banks of streams in many parts of the Rocky Mountains, induces me to believe that the individuals of this species, instead of proceeding along the shores, pass overland towards their breeding grounds, however far northward they may be situated. … While in our Atlantic Districts, it is found in much greater numbers on the Chesapeake and the streams that flow into it, than any where else. Indeed it is not more than twenty years since its regular appearance and sojourn on the waters of the Southern States has been observed or at least acknowledged. Although at New Orleans, where it goes by the name of Canard Cheval, it has been known to the oldest duck-shooters now alive, from their earliest recollection, it is not more than about fifteen years since it began to rise, from a very low price to two dollars the pair, at which it sold during my visit in March 1837.