Common Buzzard or Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni), Volume 4, Plate 372

Audubon drew the hawk from a dead specimen supplied by western explorer James Kirk Townsend, probably during the 1836-1837 winter in Charleston. His son John Woodhouse Audubon might have drawn the Marsh Hare, while Maria Martin contributed a horned lizard (left out in this plate but recycled in plate 386, featuring the White Egret).

This plate is truly the work of many hands. Remarkably, Havell added a landscape featuring a farm, piles of logs near a riverbank, and some crude enclosures as well as a fence in the making. The manufactured image in the foreground thus finds its equivalent in the pre–industrial process of turning nature to human use that was added as a background. Audubon’s essay continues this cobbling–together of disparate materials by adding a long quotation from Sir John Richardson’s Fauna Boreali–Americana (1829–37). As he was nearing the end of his work on Birds of America, Audubon was beginning to realize that the days of natural history as the solitary enterprise of a heroic individual were coming to an end, too.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

The specimen from which the figure before you was taken, was shot by Dr. TOWNSEND on a rock near the Columbia river, on which it had its nest. Unfortunately, however, he has not supplied me with any account of this species, and the only notice respecting its habits that I have seen, is that in the Fauna Boreali–Americana, by Dr. RICHARDSON:— “The Common Buzzard arriving in the Fur Countries in the middle of April very soon afterwards begins to build its nest; and, having reared its young, departs about the end of September. It haunts the low alluvial points of land which stretch out under the high banks of a river; and may be observed sitting for a long time motionless on the bough of a tree, watching patiently for some small quadruped, bird, or reptile to pass within its reach. As soon as it espies its prey, it glides silently into the air, and, sweeping easily and rapidly down, seizes it in its claws. When disturbed, it makes a short circuit, and soon settles on another perch. It builds its nest on a tree, of short sticks, lining it sparingly with deer’s hair. The eggs, from three to five in number, are equal in size to those of the domestic fowl, and have a greenish–white colour, with a few large dark brown blotches at the thick end. It was seen by the Expedition as far north as the fifty–seventh parallel of latitude, and it most probably has a still higher range.”