Audubon, Passenger Pigeon, Plate 62

Audubon, Passenger Pigeon, Plate 62
AUDUBON, John James (1785 - 1851).
Passenger Pigeon, Plate 62.
Aquatint engraving with original hand color. London: Robert Havell, 1827-1838.
25 3/4" x 38" sheet.

Comparable: Arader Galleries, 2019 - $31,250; Christie's, 2004 - $28,680.

"Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by facts well known. Thus, Pigeons have been killed in the neighbourhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these districts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so great that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must in this case have travelled between three and four hundred miles in six hours, which shews their speed to be at an average of about one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would enable one of these birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in less than three days" (Audubon's Ornithological Biography, 1831).