(Artist, syndicated writer and naturalist, Rex Burress, considers the BVD (Better View Desired) problems birders often encounter (Ed.))  

As much as Audubon members enjoy the bird watching tools of the 21st Century, often burdened with a formidable array of expensive binoculars/telescopes/cameras, getting a clear view of flitting feathers is still part of the challenge.

Sitting ducks are generally static enough to get into focus, but those flying fowl zip along the waterways so fast your view is often blurred, as was my 400mm digital of landing Snow Geese at Gray Lodge in November. I constantly see Mergansers, Cormorants, Goldeneyes, and Bufflehead streaking with impressive speed up the Feather River at Oroville.

Hunters regularly encounter fast-moving birds, but the Mallard and Green-winged Teal that some generous hunting neighbors bestowed upon me didn't look fast anymore. In fact, the once beautiful plumage was a tangle of stained ruffled feathers that rather dimmed my appetite for duck.

All of this reminds me of John James Audubon and his particular challenge of depicting birds in art in those binocular-less days of the 1820's. His method to study detail when there was no wealth of optical and photographic aid, was to shoot the subjects and position them on a wired board where he could record the detail as well as some degree of natural position. Part of that process was to skin the bird to save the feathers and then eat the body. Audubon's heroic 12-year effort to produce the "Birds of America" resulted in a volume that might be considered crude by today's high tech wildlife art standards, but his accomplishment under hardship speaks forth in the value of his paintings. The last time one of his 200 original double elephant folios containing 435 species of birds was sold at auction, it fetched 8.8 million dollars!

A typical journal entry recorded on his last expedition - the 1843 journey up the Missouri River -suggests the accuracy of his gun. "Went ashore May 4, and killed a catbird, water-thrush, seventeen parakeets, a yellow chat, a new finch, two white-throated finches, one white-crowned, a yellow-rumped warbler, a gray squirrel, a loon, and two rough-winged swallows." He wanted to go on to the West Coast beyond Fort Union to add to his bird art, but his failing health stalled him at about 435 bird species, not bad considering those days of difficult travel.

Of note to artists, his "watercolors" were actually produced in mixed media, including the use of watercolor, oil, gouache, pastel, graphite, and metallic burnishing - or even scratching - all on paper. Anything to get an effect.

It should be remembered that Audubon's two sons, John Woodhouse and Victor helped produce the Audubon art, especially the "Quadrupeds of North America," as well as several botanical artists who often did the flora in the paintings. John Woodhouse is also to be remembered as making a sketching journey to California in 1849 via a difficult, nine month trek including crossing the Mexican deserts. His paintings were lost at sea.