Wild Turkey Gobbler Fine Art Bird Print by John James Audubon

An archival premium Quality art Print of the Wild Turkey Gobbler by John James Audubon for sale by Brandywine General Store. The painting shows a bird that has a full beard and walking through a field planted with sugar cane, originally painted by Audubon for his ornithology book, The Birds of North America. The turkeys are so large that Audubon painted two pictures of them, this one with the male and another one with the female and poults. Since his drawings were done to scale in life, this was his only option for the larger birds such as the turkeys. Audubon must have thought highly of the wild turkey because this is the very first print that he completed for his book, while the turkey hen and poults were also in the first series of prints being the 6th plate. Meleagris Gallopavo - Mr. Audubon says of the wild turkey: "The great size and beauty of the Wild Turkey, its value as a delicate and highly prized article of food, and the circumstance of its being the origin of the domestic race now generally dispersed over both continents, render it one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States of America. The unsettled parts of the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, an immense extent of country to the north-west of these districts, upon the Mississippi and Missouri, and the vast regions drained by these rivers from their confluence to Louisiana, including the wooded parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, are the most abundantly supplied with this magnificent bird. It is less plentiful in Georgia and the Carolinas, becomes still scarcer in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and is now very rarely seen to the eastward of the last mentioned States. In the course of my rambles through Long Island, the State of New York, and the country around the Lakes, I did not meet with a single individual, although I was informed that some exist in those parts. Turkeys are still to be found along the whole line of the Alleghany Mountains, where they have become so wary as to be approached only with extreme difficulty. While in the Great Pine Forest in 1829, I found a single feather that had been dropped from the tail of a female, but saw no bird of the kind. Farther eastward, I do not think they are now to be found. I shall describe the manners of this bird as observed in the countries where it is most abundant, and having resided for many years in Kentucky and Louisiana, may be understood as referring chiefly to them....". Audubon Birds art print #01