SOURCE: "My Style of Drawing Birds," in Audubon and His Journals, by Maria R. Audubon, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, pp. 522-27.

In the following essay, originally published at the time The Birds of America appeared, Audubon explains his techniques for making his bird paintings appear lifelike.

When, as a little lad, I first began my attempts at representing birds on paper, I was far from possessing much knowledge of their nature, and, like hundreds of others, when I had laid the effort aside, I was under the impression that it was a finished picture of a bird because it possessed some sort of a head and tail, and two sticks in lieu of legs; I never troubled myself with the thought that abutments were requisite to prevent it from falling either backward or forward, and oh! what bills and claws I did draw, to say nothing of a perfectly...