Audubon Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Audubon. Here they are! All 50 of them:

Tell me a story. / In this century, and moment, of mania, tell me a story. / Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. / The name of the story will be time, / But you must not speak its name. / Tell me a story of deep delight.
Robert Penn Warren
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
John James Audubon
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang the best.
John James Audubon
[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.
Georges Cuvier
It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, "I drank too much last night." You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium, heard it from the golf links and the tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover. "I drank too much," said Donald Westerhazy. "We all drank too much," said Lucinda Merrill. "It must have been the wine," said Helen Westerhazy. "I drank too much of that claret.
John Cheever
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.
John James Audubon
As the director of one of the agencies providing free mental health services says, the Audubon Society spends more time, care, and money counting birds than we do counting homeless people.
Danielle Steel (A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless)
To wake in some dawn and see / As though down a rifle barrel, lined up / Like sights, the self that was, the self that is, and there / Far off but in range, completing that alignment, your fate.
Robert Penn Warren (Audubon: A Vision)
The Troubadours Etc." Just for this evening, let's not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads through metal contraptions to eat. We've followed West 84, and what else? Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields, lounging sheep, telephone wires, yellowing flowering shrubs. Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them, the violet underneath of clouds. Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up: there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled— darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of their wings. After a while, it must have seemed that they followed not instinct or pattern but only one another. When they stopped, Audubon observed, they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers. And when we stop we'll follow—what? Our hearts? The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love only through miracle, but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them. Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you. Think of me in the garden, humming quietly to myself in my blue dress, a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms, though cloudless. At what point is something gone completely? The last of the sunlight is disappearing even as it swells— Just for this evening, won't you put me before you until I'm far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer— my wonderful and less than.
Mary Szybist (Incarnadine: Poems)
For everything there is a season / But there is the dream / Of a season past all seasons.
Robert Penn Warren (Audubon: A Vision)
The worse my drawings were, the more beautiful did the originals appear.
John James Audubon
A similar unhappy fate awaited the delightful Bachman’s warbler. Always rare, it was said to have one of the loveliest songs of all birds. For years it escaped detection, but in 1939, two birders, operating independently in different places, coincidentally saw a Bachman’s warbler within two days of each other. Both shot the birds (nice work, boys!), and that, it appears, was that for the Bachman’s warbler. But there are almost certainly others that disappeared before anyone much noticed. John James Audubon painted three species of bird—the small-headed flycatcher, the carbonated warbler, and the Blue Mountain warbler—that have not been seen by anyone since. The same is true of Townsend’s bunting, of which there is one stuffed specimen in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.
Henry David Thoreau
On one hand the Christian missionaries sought to convert the heathen, by fire and sword if need be, to the gospel of peace, brotherhood, and heavenly beatitude; on the other, the more venturesome spirits wished to throw off the constraining traditions and customs, and begin life afresh, levelling distinctions of class, eliminating superfluities and luxuries, privileges and distinctions, and hierarchical rank. In short, to go back to the Stone Ages, before the institutions of Bronze Age civilization had crystallized. Though the Western hemisphere was indeed inhabited, and many parts of it were artfully cultivated, so much of it was so sparsely occupied that the European thought of it as a virgin continent against whose wildness he pitted his manly strength. In one mood the European invaders preached the Christian gospel to the native idolaters, subverted them with strong liquors, forced them to cover their nakedness with clothes, and worked them to an early death in mines; in another, the pioneer himself took on the ways of the North American Indian, adopted his leather costume, and reverted to the ancient paleolithic economy: hunting, fishing, gathering shellfish and berries, revelling in the wilderness and its solitude, defying orthodox law and order, and yet, under pressure, improvising brutal substitutes. The beauty of that free life still haunted Audubon in his old age.
Lewis Mumford (The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2))
My entrance into the courtyard caused a small stir among the lookouts. I could tell because in the middle of February, in the dark of night, Baxter Terrace suddenly sounded like an Audubon Society refuge - birdcalls being the latest in urban drug - selling counterintelligence... Birdcalls allowed much more information to be imparted to other members of the operation, without the visitor being aware of what was being communicated. So while a crow's harsh cry could harken the arrival of a member of the city narcotics unit - a significant threat - the sweet song of a chickadee might signal an officer who was merely escorting a social worker to an appointment allowing business to continue in guarded fashion. Someone like me, a stranger on unknown business, might warrant a whipporwill's call. Where exactly a city kid learned what a whipporwill sounded like, I have no idea. But these kids were nothing if not resourceful. It makes you wonder what they could have accomplished under different circumstances.
Brad Parks (Eyes of the Innocent (Carter Ross Mystery #2))
Against firelight, he sees the face of the woman / Lean over, and the lips purse sweet as to bestow a kiss, but / This is not true, and the great glob of spit / Hangs there, glittering, before she lets it fall. The spit is what softens like silk the passage of steel / On the fine-grained stone. It whispers.
Robert Penn Warren (Audubon: A Vision)
I asked how many Audubon's warblers he'd seen or hermit thrushes he'd heard and he grinned sheepishly, looking down at his bootlaces. But this was an unfair question. Such a hiker has probably never slowed enough to notice, but I continued: 'Have you tried meadow sitting or cloud watching?' 'Anyone can do that,' was his response. There it is again. Machismo. This fellow is going to achieve, be a first, do things that not everyone does or even can do. That becomes his goal. We're a restless breed, we moderns. Hardest it is to sit still and be attentive to our surroundings. Boredom comes to most of us very quickly. - Randy Morgenson
Eric Blehm, The Last Season
What’s going on in your backyard?” He heard her chair creak. “Mr. Bluebird’s nowhere in sight. He must be out hunting for food. Mrs. Bluebird is incubating her eggs.” “They’re married?” “Of course.” “How do you know?” “Because . . . they’re, you know, they’re having a family.” “Did Audubon’s publication tell you birds who nest are married?” “I’ll have you know, sir, bluebirds mate for life.” “They do?” “They do.” “Well, then. I stand corrected.” Across the room a pair of carved cuckoo birds in an ornate clock poked out to announce the quarter hour. “Are cuckoo birds monogamous?” “Mostly.” “In that case, Mr. and Mrs. Cuckoo say hello.
Deeanne Gist (Love on the Line)
The real loser in the eastern forests has been the songbird. One of the most striking losses was the Carolina parakeet, a lovely, innocuous bird whose numbers in the wild were possibly exceeded only by the unbelievably numerous passenger pigeon. (When the first pilgrims came to America there were an estimated nine billion passenger pigeons—more than twice the number of all birds found in America today.) Both were hunted out of existence—the passenger pigeon for pig feed and the simple joy of blasting volumes of birds from the sky with blind ease, the Carolina parakeet because it ate farmers’ fruit and had a striking plumage that made a lovely ladies’ hat. In 1914, the last surviving members of each species died within weeks of each other in captivity. A similar unhappy fate awaited the delightful Bachman’s warbler. Always rare, it was said to have one of the loveliest songs of all birds. For years it escaped detection, but in 1939, two birders, operating independently in different places, coincidentally saw a Bachman’s warbler within two days of each other. Both shot the birds (nice work, boys!), and that, it appears, was that for the Bachman’s warbler. But there are almost certainly others that disappeared before anyone much noticed. John James Audubon painted three species of bird—the small-headed flycatcher, the carbonated warbler, and the Blue Mountain warbler—that have not been seen by anyone since. The same is true of Townsend’s bunting, of which there is one stuffed specimen in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Between the 1940s and 1980s, the populations of migratory songbirds fell by 50 percent in the eastern United States (in large part because of loss of breeding sites and other vital wintering habitats in Latin America) and by some estimates are continuing to fall by 3 percent or so a year. Seventy percent of all eastern bird species have seen population declines since the 1960s. These days, the woods are a pretty quiet place.
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
a study by the National Audubon Society revealed Tuesday. The seven-year study of North American birds found that more than 300 avian species - nearly half the birds on the continent - will be in dire straits by 2080 unless something is done to reduce carbon emissions.
Anonymous
It is entirely possible that you get unpredictable behavior out of predictable rules.
Frank Heppner
We successfully eradicated the bright green and yellow Carolina parakeet, our only native parrot and one of America’s most beautiful birds (look at Audubon’s painting of them sometime) because, as with coyotes, agriculturalists thought they were pests whose lives weren’t worth the space the creatures were taking up. During this unique and
Dan Flores (Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History)
BIBLIOGRAPHY Often the question of which books were used for research in the Merry series is asked. So, here is a list (in no particular order). While not comprehensive, it contains the major sources. An Encyclopedia of Faeries by Katharine Briggs Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend by Miranda J. Green Celtic Goddesses by Miranda J. Green Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis Goddesses in World Mythology by Martha Ann and Dorothy Myers Imel A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross The Ancient British Goddesses by Kathy Jones Fairy Tradition in Britain by Lewis Spense One Hundred Old Roses for the American Garden by Clair G. Martin Taylor’s Guide to Roses Pendragon by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd Kings and Queens from Collins Gem Butterflies of Europe: A Princeton Guide by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington Butterflies and Moths of Missouri by J. Richard and Joan E. Heitzman Dorling Kindersly Handbook: Butterflies and Moths by David Carter The Natural World of Bugs and Insects by Ken and Rod Preston Mafham Big Cats: Kingdom of Might by Tom Brakefield Just Cats by Karen Anderson Wild Cats of the World by Art Wolfe and Barbara Sleeper Beauty and the Beast translated by Jack Zipes The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old by Ralph Manheim Complete Guide to Cats by the ASPCA Field Guide to Insects and Spiders from the National Audubon Society Mammals of Europe by David W. MacDonald Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham Northern Mysteries and Magick by Freya Aswym Cabbages and Kings by Jonathan Roberts Gaelic: A Complete Guide for Beginners The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley Holland The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson
Laurell K. Hamilton (Seduced by Moonlight (Meredith Gentry, #3))
Nineteen sixty-five was a violent, landmark year for the civil rights movement. Black protesters attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery twice, only to be viciously beaten back by Alabaman police before succeeding the third time. Lyndon Johnson finally passed the Voting Rights Act that prohibited discriminatory practices in voting. Malcolm X was assassinated as he was giving a speech at a rally in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom. And in August, Watts erupted into a mass riot, after years of its citizens being frustrated by joblessness, housing discrimination, and police brutality. Race was the topmost concern of most Americans that year, the majority of whom felt threatened by African Americans demanding basic civil rights.
Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning)
The bird life, was, as ever, of great interest to ship’s surgeon McCormick. On seeing hovering over the ship what he believed to be a new species of Lestris, or Arctic Yager, described by Audubon, the great American bird illustrator, as an ‘indefatigable teaser of the smaller gulls’, he took a pot-shot at it. His shot failed to despatch the bird cleanly and, after descending near the deck, it recovered and flew away with one leg broken. McCormick, unusually, felt compelled to justify himself: ‘For notwithstanding that my duties as ornithologist compel me to take the lives of these most beautiful and interesting creatures . . . I never do so without a sharp sting of pain and qualm of conscience, so fond am I of all the feathered race.’ So fond, indeed, that on the same night he recorded that ‘Between midnight and one a.m. I succeeded in adding two more of the elegant white petrel to my collection, one falling dead on the quarter-deck and the other on the gun-room skylight . . . a third I shot . . . fell overboard into the sea.
Michael Palin (Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time)
For Charleston and Rossville residents, the forest around Clay Pit Ponds was an irreplaceable natural area with native and industrial history. In 1951, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses proposed filling in the freshwater wetlands with trash to prepare the land for development. The Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists, the Staten Island Museum, and the Audubon Society teamed up to save the seven ponds in the preserve, home to herons, ducks, muskrats, and bitterns. “I can’t imagine any park commissioner in the world permitting the dumping of garbage into such beautiful ponds,” said W. Lynn McCracken, chairman of the Park Association of Staten Island.
Sergey Kadinsky (Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams in the Five Boroughs)
She considers a tray of flaky 'jesuites,' their centers redolent of frangipani cream, decorated with violet buds preserved in clouds of black crystal sugar. Or 'dulce de leche' tarts- caramelized swirls on a 'pate sucree' crust, glowing with chocolate, tiny muted peaks, ruffles of white pastry like Edwardian collars. But nothing seems special enough and nothing seems right. Nothing seems like Stanley. Avis brings out the meticulous botanical illustrations she did in school, pins them all around the kitchen like a room from Audubon's house. She thinks of slim layers of chocolate interspersed with a vanilla caramel. On top she might paint a frosted forest with hints of white chocolate, dashes of rosemary subtle as deja vu. A glissando of light spilling in butter-drops from one sweet lime leaf to the next. On a drawing pad she uses for designing wedding cakes, she begins sketching ruby-throated hummingbirds in flecks of raspberry fondant, a sub-equatorial sun depicted in neoclassical butter cream. At the center of the cake top, she draws figures regal and languid as Gauguin's island dwellers, meant to be Stanley, Nieves, and child. Their skin would be cocoa and coffee and motes of cherry melded with a few drops of cream. Then an icing border of tiny mermaids, nixies, selkies, and seahorses below, Pegasus, Icarus, and phoenix above.
Diana Abu-Jaber (Birds of Paradise)
Deep, fluting emotions were a form of weakness. She'd seen the softening in her work over the years, she'd started making the lazy, homey treats like apple crumble, chocolate muffins, butterscotch pudding, and lemon bars. They were fast and cheap and they pleased her children. But she'd trained at one of the best pastry programs in the country. Her teachers were French. She'd learned the classical method of making fondant, of making real buttercream with its spun-candy base and beating the precise fraction off egg into the pate a choux. She knew how to blow sugar into glassine nests and birds and fountains, how to construct seven-tiered wedding cakes draped with sugar curtains copied from the tapestries at Versailles. When the other students interned at the Four Seasons, the French Laundry, and Dean & Deluca, Avis had apprenticed with a botanical illustrator in the department of horticulture at Cornell, learning to steady her hand and eye, to work with the tip of the brush, to dissect and replicate in tinted royal icing and multihued glazes the tiniest pieces of stamen, pistil, and rhizome. She studied Audubon and Redoute. At the end of her apprenticeship, her mentor, who pronounced the work "extraordinary and heartbreaking," arranged an exhibition of Avis's pastries at the school. "Remembering the Lost Country" was a series of cakes decorated in perfectly rendered sugar olive branches, cross sections of figs, and frosting replicas of lemon leaves. Her mother attended and pronounced the effect 'amusant.
Diana Abu-Jaber (Birds of Paradise)
I might be a fan of Audubon, I suppose." "Ah, birds. I can tell a lot about a person by the type of art they're drawn to. You say Audubon, and I think of someone with a meticulous eye for detail. But that's an easy assumption, isn't it? Not the sort of thing that impresses someone like you much." "Like me?" "Uh-huh. Skeptic." He studied her intently, and she was surprised to find herself unaffected, buffered from his scrutiny by her coat and her mittens, her ugly shoes and her padded socks, her warm cup of coffee and her anonymity. He rubbed his chin with his knuckle. "I would say a person who hangs Audubon on her walls is a person who believes in God, but not necessarily religion. A person who believes in free will, but also in the existence of a natural pecking order, pardon the pun, in all societies. Aware of it, and accepts it. I would say such a person has the capacity to be awed by nature and horrified by it, in equal amounts. A scientist's brain, but an artist's soul. How am I doing?" Alice smiled. "Remarkable." "You're not impressed. I see I'll have to up my game." He looked at her face, her eyes, and she looked back at him blandly, keeping her sharp corners hidden. She had little practice talking to strangers but embraced the thought that she could play the role of anyone she chose, trying on imagined identities to see what fit: businesswoman here for a meeting, opera impresario, wealthy collector, lover en route to a secret assignation. "Hmm," he said, narrowing his eyes while he watched her. "It's not so much an admiration for the artist as it is for the subject matter, correct? What is it about birds? People envy them the ability of flight, of course, but it must be more. Maybe not just their ability to fly, but to fly away 'from', is that it? To leave trouble behind, be free from boundaries, from expectations.
Tracy Guzeman (The Gravity of Birds)
But Not the Hippopotamus This book is a book about a hippopotamus that watches other animals play together and do certain activities. The hippopotamus just hangs around waiting for them to ask him to play. They finally ask him to play and so he is now included. This book I feel covers the Identity of courage by the other kids asking hippopotamus to go play with them. John James Audubon Painted Birds: Little Naturalists This book describes James Audubon and the type of artwork he does. This book shows all the parts of a bird such as the beak, legs, wings, etc. This book is children's literature because it is teaching the children the parts of a bird as well as illustrating the pictures of the birds so that the children can comprehend the birds and have illustrations to help.
Sandra Boynton
decline from present levels, would be ideal.” Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon magazine
Jeremy Stone (Surviving the New World Order (Surviving The New World Order Duology Book 1))
The abolishment of all individual nations’ governments and borders 2. The abolishment of all private property 3. The abolishment of all inheritance 4. The abolishment of all Patriotism 5. The abolishment of all Religion---except the one they will offer 6. The abolishment of all family and marriage 7. The culling of mankind down to a more manageable number of not more than 500 million. “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." -Ted Turner, Audubon magazine interview 1996, founder of CNN, Club of Rome/Bilderberg Group member, major United Nations donor and supporter, and big time proponent of the Great Plan
J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Rise of the New World Order: The Culling of Man)
You are 50 percent less likely to see a bumblebee than you were in 1974. Butterfly populations have decreased, according to one estimate, by 33 percent in the last twenty years. Three billion birds have disappeared from North American skies in the past five decades. Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report warns that half of all birds on our continent are at risk,
Sy Montgomery (The Hummingbirds' Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings)
Near our old apartment in Auburn, there is a trail of trees called the George Bengtson Historic Tree Trail, named after a white research forester and plant physiologist at the University of Auburn, Alabama. A great man, I’m sure. These trees are grafted from scions of heritage trees. Among the trees planted: Lewis & Clark Osage Orange. Trail of Tears Water Oak. General Jackson Black Walnut. General Robert E. Lee Sweetgum. Southern Baldcypress. Johnny Appleseed Apple Tree. Mark Twain Bur Oak. Lewis & Clark Cottonwood. Helen Keller Southern Magnolia. Amelia Earhart Sugar Maple. Chief Logan American Elm. Lincoln’s Tomb White Oak. John F. Kennedy Crabapple. John James Audubon Japanese Magnolia. No trees are named for Muskogee, the First People who died in the millions during epidemics, displacement, and land raids. Under the buildings and homes and replanted forests are remnants of Muskogee earthwork mounds, temples, and trenches, a complex network of pre-American cities. There is a single scion named for a northern Indian Iroquois, Chief Logan, another for the Trail of Tears, the only nod to the suffering of Indigenous people. There is no mention of Sacajawea, never mind that Lewis and Clark would’ve been lost in the American wilderness without her. George Washington Carver Green Ash is the only scion named after the Black inventor and scientist. No Black or Native women or femmes are named. No mention of a single civil rights leader, which Alabama birthed aplenty: Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Angela Y. Davis. Imagine a Zora Neale Hurston Sweetgum or a Margaret Walker Poplar.
Tanaïs (In Sensorium: Notes for My People)
Birds that are startled frequently try to take off and fly toward what looks like open space, which is often how they end up hitting windows. If the window is close enough, the bird won’t have time to get up enough speed to injure itself too badly, which is why the Audubon Society recommends that if you can’t put bird feeders more than 10 meters away from your window, you should put them closer than 1 meter.
Randall Munroe (What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
Eschew the skylark and the nightingale, birds that Audubon never found. A national literature ought to be built, as the robin builds its nest, out of the twigs and straws of one's native meadows.
Van Wyck Brooks
My idea of a trip into nature is a suite at the Ritz and a book of Audubon prints.
Susan Elia MacNeal (The Prisoner in the Castle (Maggie Hope, #8))
He who follows the feathered inhabitants of the forest and plains, however rough or tangled the paths may be, seldom fails to obtain the objects of his pursuit, provided he be possessed of due enthusiasm and perseverance.
John James Audubon (Delineations of American scenery and character (American environmental studies))
I am not lying, the map that I drew was something that you would stop to look at. Audubon himself would have stopped and whistled, which is just what Mr. Barber did. Then he crouched next to me, and the sent of this coffee steamed up. "Douglas, did you trace that?" "Nope." "And those seagulls?" "I thought they would add realism." "They're fantastic," Mr. Barber said. "Thanks," I said. He whistled again. Then he stood up and took a step.
Schmidt, Gary D.
Southern hospitality is replaced by poverty fueled hostility.
Brian W. Smith (The Audubon Park Murder (Sleepy Carter #1))
She controlled that cigarette with the skill of a chain smoking shade tree mechanic.
Brian W. Smith (The Audubon Park Murder (Sleepy Carter #1))
Let us here lay to rest the myth that birds’ innards will burst if they scavenge the rice thrown at weddings. Over the years, this enduring bit of misinformation migrated as far as Ann Landers’s column and the Connecticut state legislature. In 1985, Representative Mae Schmidle proposed “An Act Prohibiting the Use of Uncooked Rice at Nuptial Affairs.” The Audubon Society called hooey, pointing out that migrating birds feed on fields of rice. Some churches ban the practice anyway, not because it’s perilous for birds but because it’s perilous for guests, who could slip on the hard, round grains and fall and then fly off to a personal injury lawyer.
Mary Roach (Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law)
Ellison writes, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Brian W. Smith (The Audubon Park Murder (Sleepy Carter #1))
Sometimes it’s a lot easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Brian W. Smith (The Audubon Park Murder (Sleepy Carter #1))
John Steinbeck wrote, “All great and precious things are lonely.
Brian W. Smith (The Audubon Park Murder (Sleepy Carter #1))
Audubon and NWF CEOs would send out during the week fundraising letters protesting the killing of a particular species of animal and then spend the weekend killing ducks or other animals for fun and recreation. For example, former NWF
Chris Palmer (Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker: The Challenges of Staying Honest in an Industry Where Ratings Are King)
Audubon considered it a bad day if he didn’t shoot a hundred birds. “It’s amazing that his name has become synonymous with conservation.
Meryl Sawyer (Half Moon Bay)
In one such call to arms, at an 1897 Audubon lecture held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the ornithologist Frank Chapman spoke of the Birds of Paradise piled up in milliners’ workshops: “This beautiful bird is now almost extinct. The species fashion selects is doomed. It lies in the power of women to remedy a great evil.
Kirk Wallace Johnson (The Feather Thief)
Even Mr. Audubon's beautiful paintings that I have long admired--all were done in death. He would shoot the birds down, then re-create their beautiful details. I was foolish to not realize it sooner. Why, in our efforts to understand and observe life, must we so often snuff it out?
Eowyn Ivey (To The Bright Edge of the World)
It took me some time to realize this was my family— this stoic, forthright little regiment of women, all exceptionally well read, well spoken, each one a skilled athlete —all staunch and devout members of the Audubon Society. Most weekends became, from dawn to dusk, one long bird-watching expedition as, armed to the teeth with picnic bas-kets, cameras and field glasses, they made their reverent way into the deep woods, treading as softly as Indians with me in tow. Not too much fun for yours truly. In spite of what the poets say, youth is not always the happiest of seasons. None of my aunts ever bothered to conceal their displeasure at my ignorance on the subject of ornithology and remained for the most part coolly disapproving. Until one day when I petulantly ran from an unfinished lunch to seek relief in the great outdoors —there, on top of a spruce which was bent over from the weight of it, sat an enormous bird with strange claws the likes of which I'd never seen. Forgetting all unsettled scores, I ran back inside and announced my discovery.
Christopher Plummer (In Spite of Myself: A Memoir)