Mocking Bird by John James Audubon art print

An archival premium Quality art Print of The Mockingbird by John James Audubon for sale by Brandywine General Store. This artwork was picture number 21 in his great ornithology book, The Birds of America. This painting shows several mocking-birds in and flying around their nest in a Florida Jessamine bush with a huge rattlesnake in the nest waiting for a mocking-bird to land so he can eat it. Orpheus Polyglottus - Audubon says of the Mocking-bird "In the beginning of April, sometimes a fortnight earlier, the Mocking-birds pair, and construct their nests. In some instances they are so careless as to place the nest between the rails of a fence directly by the road. I have frequently found it in such places, or in the fields, as well as in briars, but always so easily discoverable that any person desirous of procuring one, might do so in a very short time. It is coarsely constructed on the outside, being there composed of dried sticks of briars, withered leaves of trees, and grasses, mixed with wool. Internally it is finished with fibrous roots disposed in a circular form, but carelessly arranged. The female lays from four to six eggs the first time, four or five the next, and when there is a third brood, which is sometimes the case, seldom more than three, of which I have rarely found more than two hatched. The eggs are of a short oval form, light green, blotched and spotted with umber. The young of the last brood not being able to support themselves until late in the season, when many of the berries and insects have become scarce, are stunted in growth;--a circumstance which has induced some persons to imagine the existence in the United States of two species of Common Mocking-bird, a larger and a smaller. This, however, in as far as my observation goes, is not correct. The first brood is frequently brought to the bird-market in New Orleans as early as the middle of April. A little farther up the country, they are out by the fifteenth of May. The second brood is hatched in July, and the third in the latter part of September. The musical powers of this bird have often been taken notice of by European naturalists, and persons who find pleasure in listening to the song of different birds whilst in confinement or at large. Some of these persons have described the notes of the Nightingale as occasionally fully equal to those of our bird, but to compare her essays to the finished talent of the Mocking-bird, is, in my opinion, quite absurd." Audubon bird print #21