GREAT WHITE HERON... VIEW KEY-WEST (PLATE CCLXXXI)

Great Blue Heron, "Ardea herodias" JW 36 fine, fresh impression, small colorist's error in the feathers of the bird's neck, a diagonal crease in the lower right margin corner, traces of printer's ink in the right margin sheet 25 1/2 by 38 in.; 650 by 965 mm. Based on a composition painted in Key West, Florida on May 26, 1832. Edward Dwight explained that: "Audubon saw the great white heron for the first time in the Florida Keys, where he caught several alive. They survived well in captivity, and he took several to Charleston as a gift for his friend the Reverend Bachman. The herons, however, did not prove to be ideal pets: 'It was difficult... to procure fish enough for them, as they swallowed a bucketful of mullets in a few minutes, each devouring about a gallon... they would frequently set, like pointer dogs, at moths which hovered over the flowers, and with a well directed stroke of their bill seize the fluttering insect and instantly swallow it. On many occasions, they also struck at chicken, grown fowls and ducks, which they would tear up and devour. Once a cat which was asleep in the sunshine, on the wooden sets of the veranda, was pinned through the body to the boards, and killed by one of them.' When a heron turned on one of the young children, Bachman, his patience exhausted, ordered the birds killed." See color illustration on Plate XXIII.