The Jer Falcon Or Iceland Falcon (Falco Islandicus), Volume 4, Plate 366

Painted in Great Britain in 1837, from a single specimen in captivity, owned by John Heppenstall, Sheffield, England. The drawing was made after the bird had died.

Audubon drew a male and female Gyrfalcon in 1833, under particularly harsh conditions. They are not the birds depicted in the plate, but Audubon’s memory of having seen these rare birds in flight during his Labrador trip surely influenced this dramatic rendering. The cliffs appear in Audubon’s watercolor, too; paralleling the female bird’s downward swoop as well as the male’s awkwardly defensive gesture, the landscape seems to be on the move, too. Four years later, the unfathomable wildness of Labrador still lingered in Audubon’s memory.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

On the 6th August 1833, while my young friends, THOMAS LINCOLN and JOSEPH COOLEDGE, accompanied by my son JOHN, were rambling by the rushing waters of a brook banked by stupendous rocks, eight or ten miles from the port of Bras d’Or, on the coast of Labrador, they were startled by a loud and piercing shriek, which issued from the precipices above them. On looking up, my son observed a large hawk plunging over and about him. It was instantly brought to the ground. A second hawk dashed towards the dead one, as if determined to rescue it; but it quickly met the same fate, the contents of my son’s second barrel bringing it to his feet. … My son and his companions returned to the Ripley towards evening. The two hawks which they had brought with them, I knew at once to be of a species which I had not before seen, at least in America. Think not that I laid them down at once—No, reader, I attentively examined every part of them. Their eyes, which had been carefully closed by the young hunters, I opened, to observe their size and colour. I drew out their powerful wings, distended their clenched talons, looked into their mouths, and admired the sharp tooth–like process of their upper mandible. I then weighed them in my hand, and at length concluded that no Hawk that I had ever before handled, looked more like a great Peregrine Falcon. … The four Falcons mentioned were all that were seen of this species during our expedition, and I am inclined to think that these birds must be rare in that part of Labrador. On dissecting them, I found them to be a male and a female, and saw that the latter had laid eggs that season. It is therefore probable that the two which left the nest at the approach of the party were the young birds.

I made my drawing of them the day after their death. It was one of the severest tasks which I ever performed, and was done under the most disagreeable circumstances. I sat up nearly the whole of the night, to sketch them in outline. The next day it rained for hours, and the water fell on my paper and colours all the while from the rigging of the Ripley.