White-headed Eagle (Haliacetus leucocepahlus), Volume 1, Plate 1

Painted ca. 1828. The plate is based on the second of two watercolors featuring a handsome male eagle Audubon shot near Little Prairie, Mississippi. The eagle was, he proudly recorded in his journal, nearly 150 yards off when Audubon spied him. Nevertheless his “ball” went straight through the bird’s heart. The original watercolor showed the eagle perched on the carcass of a Canada Goose. One of the bird’s claws penetrates the goose’s eye, one of many images of violated (or nearly violated) sight in Audubon’s oeuvre.

Replacing the goose with a catfish and the river with a sublime vista of Alpine mountains, Audubon appeals to American as well as European viewers. The bird’s massive horizontal body contrasts with the slack, sloping, overturned body of the catfish. The debris of previous meals litters the rock on which the bird is perched, a reminder that the Bald Eagle is at home in the water as well as high up in the mountains. The accompanying essay highlights the efficient brutality of the bird, to which Audubon pays grudging respect. The swift killing of the swan echoes the rape of Leda by Zeus, except in the avian world the eagle’s mate is an eager witness and partner-as might also be, Audubon insinuates, the reader taking pleasure in such gory detail. The scene was so suggestive that Audubon deleted it from the version of the essay included in the Royal Octavo edition of Birds of America (1840-44).

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

The snow-white bird [a Trumpeter Swan] is now in sight: her long neck is stretched forward, her eye is on the watch, vigilant as that of her enemy; her large wings seem with difficulty to support the weight of her body, although they flap incessantly. So irksome do her exertions seem, that her very legs are spread beneath her tail, to aid her in her flight. She approaches, however. The Eagle has marked her for his prey. As the Swan is passing the dreaded pair, starts from his perch, in full preparation for the chase, the male bird, with an awful scream, that to the Swan’s ear brings more terror than the report of the large duck-gun.

Now is the moment to witness the display of the Eagle’s powers. He glides through the air like a falling star, and, like a flash of lightning, comes upon the timorous quarry, which now, in agony and despair, seeks, by various manoeuvres, to elude the grasp of his cruel talons. It mounts, doubles, and willingly would plunge into the stream, were it not prevented by the Eagle, which, long possessed of the knowledge that by such a stratagem the Swan might escape him, forces it to remain in the air by attempting to strike it with his talons from beneath. The hope of escape is soon given up by the Swan. It has already become much weakened, and its strength fails at the sight of the courage and swiftness of its antagonist. Its last gasp is about to escape, when the ferocious Eagle strikes with his talons the under side of its wing, and with unresisted power forces the bird to fall in a slanting direction upon the nearest shore.

It is then, reader, that you may see the cruel spirit of this dreaded enemy of the feathered race, whilst, exulting over his prey, he for the first time breathes at ease. He presses down his powerful feet, and drives his sharp claws deeper than ever into the heart of the dying Swan. He shrieks with delight, as he feels the last convulsions of his prey, which has now sunk under his unceasing efforts to render death as painfully felt as it can possibly be. The female has watched every movement of her mate; and if she did not assist him in capturing the Swan, it was not from want of will, but merely that she felt full assurance that the power and courage of her lord were quite sufficient for the deed. She now sails to the spot where he eagerly awaits her, and when she has arrived, they together turn the breast of the luckless Swan upwards, and gorge themselves with gore.