Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
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In his entry on the three birds in the illustration above, the artist Alexander Wilson wrote: "The three birds I have here introduced are but a small part of the valuable collection of new subjects in natural history discovered and preserved, admidst a thousand dangers and difficulties, by those two enterprising travellers whose intrepidity was only equalled by their discretion, and by their active and laborious pursuit of whatever might tend to render their journey useful to science and to their country. It was the request and particular wish of Captain Lewis, made to me in person, that I should make drawings of such of the feathered tribes as had been preserved, and were new. That brave soldier, that amiable and excellent man, over whose solitary grave in the wilderness 1 have since shed tears of affliction, having been cut off in the prime of his life, I hope I shall be pardoned for consecrating this humble note to his memory, until a more able pen shall do better justice to the subject.' (Vol, 1, pp. 321-322). The bird identified as a Louisiana Tanager (#1), named for the Louisiana Purchase in which it was found, is what we call a Western Tanager today. The other two birds in the illustration, Clark's Crow (#2) and Lewis's Woodpecker (#3), were named after their discoverers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/wildlife/bmam/three.htm
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Menlo Park, CA [caww54]
