Ornithological Biography, Vol. 2 (of 5): An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America

The second volume of Audubon's monumental work reads less like a scientific treatise and more like the journals of a man enchanted, and sometimes tormented, by the natural world. Written in 1834, it documents birds across an America that would vanish within a century. Here are the passenger pigeons that once darkened noon into twilight, the Carolina parakeets that filled southern swamps with color, the great auks and ivory-billed woodpeckers whose descendants would one day hunt these pages as ghosts. Audubon wanders through wilderness with a painter's eye and a poet's heart, recording the intimate details of avian life: mating dances, nest-building, the great migrations. But this is also a deeply personal document. He writes of loneliness on the trail, of missing his family, of finding solace in watching a mockingbird at dusk. This is science rendered with romantic ardor, a record of a continent that was already disappearing in Audubon's time. It is both field guide and elegy.