Blue Winged Teal by John James Audubon

An archival premium Quality art Print of the Blue Winged Teal by John James Audubon for sale by Brandywine General Store. This large flying bird was plate or picture number 313 in the first Havell edition in Birds of America, the great ornithology masterpiece produced by Audubon during the first third of the 19th century. The artist shows a male and female pair of these beautiful ducks flying over a body of water. The color of these birds is brown, black and white. The female has blue wings, while the male teal duck has blue wings and a very colorful head which is blue, black and white.

Anas Discors - Mr. Audubon describes the Blue Winged Teals in Birds of America thus: "Is it not strange, reader, that birds which are known to be abundant on the Saskatchewan river during the breeding season, and which have been observed as far north as the 57th parallel, should also be found breeding at nearly the same period in Texas? Stranger still it is that species should proceed from certain points, or winter quarters, to both of the above-mentioned regions, without paying any regard to the intermediate districts, which yet seem to be as well adapted for breeding in, as they afford thousands of convenient and secluded localities for that purpose. Yet these facts, and many others connected with Nature's wonderful arrangements, we may look upon as intended to increase the innate desire which every true lover of Nature has to study her beautiful and marvellous works. Having for some years observed such habits exhibited by the Blue-winged Teal and other birds, I have been induced to believe in the existence of what I would term a double sense of migration in many species, acted upon both in spring and in autumn, and giving to them at the latter period, the power as well as the desire of removing from the higher latitudes to opposite or meridional parts, thus to enter into the formation of the Fauna of different countries, from which again they are instigated to return to the place of their nativity, and thence diverge toward new sections of the globe equally adapted to their wants. If these observations should prove not unfounded, we need no longer be surprised to meet in different portions of the world with species which hitherto were supposed to be inhabitants only of far distant shores. The Blue-winged Teal is easily kept in captivity, and soon becomes very docile. In this state it feeds freely on coarse corn meal, and I have no doubt that it could readily be domesticated, in which case, so tender and savoury is its flesh that it would quickly put the merits of the widely celebrated Canvass-backed Duck in the shade." Audubon bird print #313