Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus Buccinator), Volume 4, Plate 406

Audubon drew a young bird in December 1821 in New Orleans, though this image was likely produced fifteen years later, in 1836/37.

Audubon portrays the Trumpeter Swan—the largest North American waterfowl—floating in darkish, yet eerily transparent water, a trick that allows him to give us a glimpse of the bird’s webbed feet. Note the ripples caused by the drifting bird. Havell added an insect, lending direction and focus to the bird’s activity. The drifting little moth also provides an interesting, colorful contrast in an image that is otherwise largely restricted to black, white, and blue.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

I kept a male alive upwards of two years, while I was residing at Henderson in Kentucky. It had been slightly wounded in the tip of the wing, and was caught after a long pursuit in a pond from which it could not escape. Its size, weight, and strength rendered the task of carrying it nearly two miles by no means easy; but as I knew that it would please my wife and my then very young children, I persevered. Cutting off the tip of the wounded wing, I turned it loose in the garden. Although at first extremely shy, it gradually became accustomed to the servants, who fed it abundantly, and at length proved so gentle as to come to my wife’s call, to receive bread from her hand. “Trumpeter,” as we named our bird, in accordance with the general practice of those who were in the habit of shooting this species, now assumed a character which until then had been unexpected, and laying aside his timidity became so bold at times as to give chase to my favourite Wild Turkey Cock, my dogs, children, and servants. Whenever the gates of our yard happened to be opened, he would at once make for the Ohio, and it was not without difficulty that he was driven home again. On one occasion, he was absent a whole night, and I thought he had fairly left us; but intimation came of his having travelled to a pond not far distant. Accompanied by my miller and six or seven of my servants, I betook myself to the pond, and there saw our Swan swimming buoyantly about as if in defiance of us all. It was not without a great deal of trouble that we at length succeeded in driving it ashore. Pet birds, good Reader, no matter of what species they are, seldom pass their lives in accordance with the wishes of their possessors; in the course of a dark and rainy night, one of the servants having left the gate open, Trumpeter made his escape, and was never again heard of.