room. “Is he all right? Have you heard from him?”
“Oh, he’s quite a ways from here by now; I’m sure of that. We won’t see him again until spring comes back. But he told me about you before he left. He said I’d find you here.”
“I’m going to miss Cornelius this winter.”
“He said you were the very best there is at finding dogwood berries,” Violet said.
Celeste smiled. “Well, I don’t know about that!”
“He told me you were a music lover.”
“Cornelius is the one who made me realize how much I liked music.”
“And he said you might like having a friend around this winter,” said the wren.
“Well, he was right about that.” Celeste chuckled.
She set out her blue-and-white china plates and filled them with tidbits from the cupboard.
“You have a beautiful nest,” Violet said admiringly. “How did you come to live here?” And Celeste told her the story, all the way from the beginning.
The two sat gazing contentedly at the surrounding landscape. They heard the creaking wagons returningfrom the fields, the jingle and clank of horse harnesses. Lafayette, silhouetted against the sky, flying with familiar flaps and glides, was returning from a fishing foray along the river; Celeste waved.
She smiled.
She thought about the summer, of surviving a terrible thunderstorm and of flying in a basket.
She thought of Mr. Audubon, and of secretly helping create a work of art.
She thought of Joseph, and how love can start with something as simple as the gift of a peanut.
She thought of Cornelius and Lafayette; and as she offered a berry to Violet, she thought how good it was to have friends.
Osprey and Weakfish (1829)
AFTERWORD
J OHN JAMES AUDUBON (1785–1851) was a master at creating powerful images filled with beauty and emotion, even though his subjects were merely birds. He spent most of his life traveling over much of eastern North America, often on foot, carrying paints and paper, sketching constantly, documenting the native plants and animals as they existed in the early 1800s.
Before Audubon came along, wildlife artists painted their subjects in static and stiff poses, as though mounted in a display case. But Audubon filled each of his paintings with a zest and vigor that makes them seem to fly across the page. This was years before photography, so his paintings are a record of animals and plants of another century. And his artistic ability was self-taught, which makes his work even more amazing.
The landscape that inspired him looked much different than it does today. Roads were scarce; this was long before the age of the automobile. Completion of the transcontinental railroad was still decades away. The population of the UnitedStates was only around ten million; that’s only about four people per square mile if you sprinkled them evenly over the country.
Today, the population is more than thirty times that, a density of nearly eighty people per square mile.
Audubon walked or rode horseback through vast tracts of forest that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, through deep woods of ancient, towering trees hundreds of years old. Thousands of miles of pristine rivers and millions of acres of woodland habitat had not yet been replaced or polluted by farms and industry. That would come later.
Along those rivers roamed animals we wouldn’t expect to see there today: cougars and jaguars, wolves and bison, lynx and elk. Audubon encountered birds that are now extinct, such as the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Carolina parakeet, and the passenger pigeon mentioned in this story.
For nearly two years he traveled with an assistant, Joseph Mason. Joseph was a great help to Audubon; and although only a teenager (he was thirteen when he started out with Audubon), he became very skilled at painting botanical subjects, particularly wildflowers. Many of the beautiful backgrounds of plants and flowers in the bird portraits are credited to Joseph.
Audubon’s
“Oh, he’s quite a ways from here by now; I’m sure of that. We won’t see him again until spring comes back. But he told me about you before he left. He said I’d find you here.”
“I’m going to miss Cornelius this winter.”
“He said you were the very best there is at finding dogwood berries,” Violet said.
Celeste smiled. “Well, I don’t know about that!”
“He told me you were a music lover.”
“Cornelius is the one who made me realize how much I liked music.”
“And he said you might like having a friend around this winter,” said the wren.
“Well, he was right about that.” Celeste chuckled.
She set out her blue-and-white china plates and filled them with tidbits from the cupboard.
“You have a beautiful nest,” Violet said admiringly. “How did you come to live here?” And Celeste told her the story, all the way from the beginning.
The two sat gazing contentedly at the surrounding landscape. They heard the creaking wagons returningfrom the fields, the jingle and clank of horse harnesses. Lafayette, silhouetted against the sky, flying with familiar flaps and glides, was returning from a fishing foray along the river; Celeste waved.
She smiled.
She thought about the summer, of surviving a terrible thunderstorm and of flying in a basket.
She thought of Mr. Audubon, and of secretly helping create a work of art.
She thought of Joseph, and how love can start with something as simple as the gift of a peanut.
She thought of Cornelius and Lafayette; and as she offered a berry to Violet, she thought how good it was to have friends.
Osprey and Weakfish (1829)
AFTERWORD
J OHN JAMES AUDUBON (1785–1851) was a master at creating powerful images filled with beauty and emotion, even though his subjects were merely birds. He spent most of his life traveling over much of eastern North America, often on foot, carrying paints and paper, sketching constantly, documenting the native plants and animals as they existed in the early 1800s.
Before Audubon came along, wildlife artists painted their subjects in static and stiff poses, as though mounted in a display case. But Audubon filled each of his paintings with a zest and vigor that makes them seem to fly across the page. This was years before photography, so his paintings are a record of animals and plants of another century. And his artistic ability was self-taught, which makes his work even more amazing.
The landscape that inspired him looked much different than it does today. Roads were scarce; this was long before the age of the automobile. Completion of the transcontinental railroad was still decades away. The population of the UnitedStates was only around ten million; that’s only about four people per square mile if you sprinkled them evenly over the country.
Today, the population is more than thirty times that, a density of nearly eighty people per square mile.
Audubon walked or rode horseback through vast tracts of forest that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, through deep woods of ancient, towering trees hundreds of years old. Thousands of miles of pristine rivers and millions of acres of woodland habitat had not yet been replaced or polluted by farms and industry. That would come later.
Along those rivers roamed animals we wouldn’t expect to see there today: cougars and jaguars, wolves and bison, lynx and elk. Audubon encountered birds that are now extinct, such as the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Carolina parakeet, and the passenger pigeon mentioned in this story.
For nearly two years he traveled with an assistant, Joseph Mason. Joseph was a great help to Audubon; and although only a teenager (he was thirteen when he started out with Audubon), he became very skilled at painting botanical subjects, particularly wildflowers. Many of the beautiful backgrounds of plants and flowers in the bird portraits are credited to Joseph.
Audubon’s
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