Plate 64
Havell CCCXVI
Anhinga
(Anhinga anhinga)
This painstakingly detailed drawing is inscribed, at lower left, “New Orleans 1822.—redrawn at… 1836”; it shows the adult and, below it, the young of this species. (An earlier version, done in 1822, is also preserved at the New-York Historical Society.) In Havell’s engraving, a water scene was added to the background, with four anhingas, possibly taken from an Audubon sketch, in the distance. “Being a bird which… rarely fails to attract the notice of the most indifferent observer,” Audubon wrote, “it has received various names.” He called it a “water-turkey”; the Creoles, as Audubon has inscribed in this drawing, called the bird Bec à Lancette, “on account of the form of its bill…”
Source: The Original Water-Color Paintings by John James Audubon. Copyright 1966 by American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.
Learn more about this print on the National Audubon Society's website.