Book Review: The Birds That Audubon Missed

The Birds That Audubon Missed:  Discovery and Desire in the American West by Kenn Kaufman, Avid Reader Press, 2024.

About a year ago exactly a local Audubon Society, of which I am a member, had an exploratory meeting to discuss a name change for the group.  The group had a long history with the name Audubon Society and, now, because of all that has come to light about John James Audubon - enslaver, theft of the work of others, fraudulent bird documentation, disparaging language related to his colleagues, etc. and most importantly, in the interest of diversity, equity and inclusion in the university town where the organization exists, the Society leadership wanted to change the organization's name.  Those assembled gave a near unanimous vote to proceed toward this goal.  I voted for the change as well and did not give it another thought.  That is until I read a New York Times article, Is Social Justice for the Birds?  Audubon Attemps an Answer by Clyde McGrady, Aug. 7, 2023.  

The article was quite good and, as NYT articles go in the era of woke, it tried to be equal to both sides.  I noticed that, in addition to the discussion of the lack of participation in birding by people of color, it had managed to sneak in a reference to ageism as in  “... but it was all old white folks," said one birder of color.   The comments were excellent and, as I recall, weighted nearly 1/2 and 1/2 to each side.  I changed my mind on the issue, but the local Audubon Society exists in a liberal bubble and I knew the name change would be approved.  I also voted in favor of the change.  

I have been birding for about thirty years - give or take - and guess that I began in my mid-40s, hence my sensitivity to the ageism reference (others may not even have noticed) in the NYT statement.  Additionally, over time, I have come to strongly dislike the word woke, now used almost entirely in a pejorative sense, even though it didn't start out that way.  (For how it's being used, it's a silly word so I understand why it attracts derision).  In the spring of this year, a new name for the local group was selected by the membership and they are moving forward.  They chose a good name and also eliminated the word Society - too highfalutin, I think.

All of the above occurred in 2023 and the first half of 2024, but when you read Kenn Kaufman's book, you will understand that his research began much earlier.  When one considers the time line of activities a book needs to meet for publication, Kenn Kaufman was ahead of everyone else.    

Remarkably the book is not just about John James Audubon.  It actually starts with the Linnaean system of classification in the 1700s and goes forward from there.  The Linnaean system also received new attention via this review, How Carl Linnaeus Set Out To Label All of Life, by Kathryn Schulz of a new biography by Gunnar Broberg, “The Man Who Organized Nature” (Princeton), The New Yorker, August 14, 2023.

There were many early North American ornithologists who preceeded J.J. Audubon.  I hesitate to call these early birders ornithologists; they were actually bird hunters, bird describers and some were also bird illustrators.  Perhaps they are more accurately described as naturalists and Kaufman uses both descriptors about equally.  To name just a few:  Mark Catesby, William Bertram, Alexander Wilson and, believe it or not, even Thomas Jefferson.  This is not an exhaustive list.  On a new continent and in a new country being explored by ornithologists and naturalists, imagine all of the birds new to Europeans.  Ultimately, Kaufman's main focus is on Alexander Wilson and Audubon.  Wilson was a Scot and Audubon was French, probably born in the West Indies, but that part of his biography is unclear.  Audubon met Wilson in 1810 and, although Kaufman does not exactly describe it this way, their meeting set up a rivalry from the get go.  When Alexander Wilson died in 1813 at the age of 47, Audubon continued to compete with him.  It was a race to see, collect, describe and name North American birds.

As I read, I tried to match the title of the book with the content of the book.  Kaufman weaves his astonishing knowledge of American birds with his equally deep historical research and, basically, writes the history of American birding.  Kaufman never says as much, but as I was reading I could easily relate American birding as it exists in the present and connect it to its 18th and 19th century foundations, to which Audubon was a major contributor.    

No question about it, John James Audubon was a scoundrel (my own mild-seeming description of the man) and Kenn Kaufman never turns away from this.  Whenever necessary he faces it head on.  He's never dismissive, cruel or political, but he gives us the full measure of the man. 

I took the photo above titled Washington Sea Eagle from the 1994 reprinting of the First Royal Octavo Edition of Audubon's Birds of America, Introduction copyright © 1994 W.S. Konecky Associates and published by Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, CA.  The story of Audubon's infamous and fraudulent bird discovery, originally he named it the Bird of Washington, is well-told by Kaufman.  Audubon stuck with his story of this bird his whole life, hence its appearance in the First Royal Octavo Edition.

Kenn Kaufman is an accomplished artist in his own right.  I never knew this about him until I read this book.  He is deeply admiring of Audubon's illustrations and he weaves this as a side story in brief chapters titled "Interludes:  Channeling the Illustrator."  These "Interludes" connect the past with the present.  My favorite of these is Interlude: Materials and Methods (page 256) where Kaufman writes about the kinds of materials that were available to Audubon for his illustrations.  I don't like many of Audubon's illustrations as some seem so contrived, but I am now more respectful.  I now understand why they are this way, and it is remarkable what Audubon did with so little.

One thing that will strike any modern day birder, like a sucker punch to the gut, was how many birds there were in Audubon's day.  In the early days of the founding and settling of this country the bird population must have been just extraordinary.  When I struggle now to find a Hairy Woodpecker or a Field Sparrow or a .... you name it, I am shaken to my core.  What have we done and continue to do with so little insight into the consequences?  Kaufman writes about this, clear-eyed, in chapters 10, 11 and 12.  Throughout the book, we recognize all of the names of the men who had birds named after them and how obsequious these honorifics were.  Kaufman writes about a PhD student, Robert Driver, and his 2018 proposal to rename the McCown Longspur and puts this into historical context.  Initially, Driver's proposal was dismissed out of hand by the American Ornithological Society (AOS).  He did not give up.  With the help of the chair of the AOS checklist committee, Dr. Terry Chester, Driver drafted a new proposal that passed in 2020 and "the erstwhile McCown's Longspur was officially renamed Thick-billed Longspur" (page 331).  The American Ornithological Society (AOS) made history when, on November 1, 2023, it voted to change all 236 honorific bird names.  Perhaps other current history pushed this to happen, but I like to think that Robert Driver's contribution hurried it along.

If I recall correctly, Kenn Kaufman never finished high school.  But he writes like he has a PhD in Fine Arts.  His field guides are well known by all birders, but he also has a significant literary publishing background as well.   This is the third literary book by Kenn Kaufman I have read; Kingbird Highway, a classic, being the first.  (I have a friend, prominent in education, who would recommend Kingbird Highway be required reading for all high school students).  The Birds That Audubon Missed is so intimate that you feel you are sitting with Kaufman as he shares his research.  His birding credentials are incomparable.  So when he writes a book of this depth, and keeps it topical, we sit up and pay attention.       

Not to sell short my own review, I include here the New York Times review, Uncovering What Audubon Missed, and What he Made Up, by Benjamin P. Russell, May 8, 2024.

I don't want to end my review with the New York Times review, so I'll share a final thought that occurred to me as I was reading.  Given the history Kaufman covers in The Birds That Audubon Missed, both past and current, the explosive growth of birding as a hobby in the US and worldwide, the understanding of the impact of human caused habitat destruction and climate change on the animal creatures we share this planet with, and much more, I recommend Kenn Kaufman's book be nominated to receive the nonfiction Pulitzer Prize.  No, it's not about war, economics, national politics or geopolitics, the drug crisis or other frequently recognized topics of writing.  (Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa won the 2023 nonfiction prize for “His Name is George Floyd").  Please, hear me out; all of these topics are enormously important and sell a lot of books.  But we are also saturated.  It's time to have a change to the constant drumbeat we are subjected to every time we read a newspaper or watch the nightly news.  If it were up to me, and it's not, I would nominate and vote for The Birds That Audubon Missed to receive the 2024 non-fiction Pulitzer Prize.   It's time that Kenn Kaufman's excellent literary and topical writing be recognized with a major prize.  We can go back to all of the other topics in 2025.  Indeed, in 2025, the other topics will be inescapable.  

Other references:

1.  Audubon's Birds of America:  Containing All of the Original Plates Reprinted from the First Royal Octavo Edition.  Introduction copyright ©1994 W.S. Konecky Associates.  Published by Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, CA. 

2.  John James Audubon The Birds Of America.  Introduction by David Allen Sibley.  Metro Books and the distinctive Metro Books logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co, Inc.  Text and illustrations © 2012 by The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.