Bonaparte Fly Catcher
Muscicapa bonapartii [now Cardellina canadensis]
Folio edition, plate 5
Having shot this bird in a cypress swamp near St. Francisville in August 1821, Audubon mistakenly thought that he had found a new species, which he named in honor of Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857), a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and an eminent ornithologist who lived in the United States from 1824 to 1833. (Audubon met Bonaparte in Philadelphia in 1824). In fact, this bird was a young female Canada Warbler, the same bird that Audubon later depicted and correctly identified in Plate 103 of the folio edition.
Susanne M. Low, An Index and Guide to Audubon’s Birds of America (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), p. 23, 25, 37.
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. 27.
View bird in National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds.
