Audubon Plate # 30, Vigors's Warbler $200 Print size: 26 1/4" x 39 1/4"; image size: 11 1/2" x 18 1/2" Click the small image for more detail
With a name difficult to enunciate and impossible to locate in a bird guide, Vigors's warbler is in truth an immature pine warbler. Considering that the bird has also been known as a pine-creeping warbler or a pine creeper because of its preference for evergreen habitat, this portrait seems executed on an unlikely perch-a spiderwort plant. But that is exactly where Audubon saw it one day in May 1812 during a visit to Mill Grove, the farm he once owned on Perkiomen Creek, near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Later, thinking it to be an undiscovered species, he named it "Vigors's Warbler" in honor or the English naturalist Nicholas A. Vigors, whom he met in London in 1828. The bird is done in pastel, the spiderwort in water color. EHJ |
