Zenaida Dove Art Print by John James Audubon

An archival premium Quality art Print of the Zenaida Dove by John James Audubon for Birds of America for sale by Brandywine General Store. This painting was plate or picture #162 in the first Havell edition. He shows a male and female specimen setting in a purple flowered anona bush in the Florida Keys. Audubon says of the Zenaida Dove "The impressions made on the mind in youth, are frequently stronger than those at a more advanced period of life, and are generally retained. My father often told me, that when yet a child, my first attempt at drawing was from a preserved specimen of a Dove, and many times repeated to me that birds of this kind are usually remarkable for the gentleness of their disposition, and that the manner in which they prove their mutual affection, and feed their offspring, was undoubtedly intended in part to teach other beings a lesson of connubial and parental attachment. Be this as it may, hypothesis or not, I have always been especially fond of Doves. The timidity and anxiety which they all manifest, on being disturbed during incubation, and the continuance of their mutual attachment for years, are distinguishing traits in their character. Who can approach a sitting Dove, hear its notes of remonstrance, or feel the feeble strokes of its wings, without being sensible that he is committing a wrong act? The cooing of the Zenaida Dove is so peculiar, that one who hears it for the first time naturally stops to ask, "What bird is that?" A man who was once a pirate assured me that several times, while at certain wells dug in the burning shelly sands of a well known Key, which must here be nameless, the soft and melancholy cry of the Doves awoke in his breast feelings which had long slumbered, melted his heart to repentance, and caused him to linger at the spot in a state of mind which he only who compares the wretchedness of guilt within him with the happiness of former innocence, can truly feel. He said he never left the place without increased fears of futurity, associated as he was, although I believe by force, with a band of the most desperate villains that ever annoyed the navigation of the Florida coasts. So deeply moved was he by the notes of any bird, and especially by those of a Dove, the only soothing sounds he ever heard during his life of horrors, that through these plaintive notes, and them alone, he was induced to escape from his vessel, abandon his turbulent companions, and return to a family deploring his absence. After paying a parting visit to those wells, and listening once more to the cooings of the Zenaida Dove, he poured out his soul in supplications for mercy, and once more became what one has said to be "the noblest work of God," an honest man. His escape was effected amidst difficulties and dangers, but no danger seemed to him to be compared with the danger of one living in the violation of human and divine laws, and now he lives in peace in the midst of his friends. ....". Columba Zenaida Audubon bird print #162