Bewick’s Long-tailed Wren

Bewick’s Long-tailed Wren
Troglodytes bewickii [now Thryomanes bewickii Audubon]
Folio edition, plate 18

Susan Low writes that “Audubon was the discoverer and describer of this species which he named for his friend Thomas Bewick, a famed English engraver on wood and writer of classics on British birds and animals. Bewick received Audubon with enthusiasm and in three days he secured eight subscribers to Birds of America and put him up for membership in two learned societies.”

In his description, Audubon notes, “I have honoured this species with the name of BEWICK, a person too well known for his admirable talents as an engraver on wood, and for his beautiful work on the Birds of Great Britain, to need any eulogy of mine. I enjoyed the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with that gentleman, and found him at all times a most agreeable, kind, and benevolent friend.”

Susanne M. Low, An Index and Guide to Audubon’s Birds of America (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), p. 41.

John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, or An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America (Edinburgh: A. Black [et al.], 1831), vol. 1, p. 96-97.

View bird in National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds.