Selby's Flycatcher
 

Selby's Flycatcher [Hooded Warbler]
Muscicapa selbii, Audubon [now Setophaga citrina] 
Folio edition, plate 9

“My journal, under the date of 1st July 1821, contains the following statement: --‘I found this bird about three miles from St Francisville in Louisiana, whilst engaged in searching for a Turkey, which I had wounded. It was afternoon, and the heat oppressive. I saw it innocently approaching us until within a few yards. . . . It moved nimbly among the twigs of the low bushes, making now and then short dashes at flies. . . . Finding the pretty flower [Adonis autumnalis or Pheasant’s eye] on which the bird is drawn, in the immediate neighbourhood, I have represented it, thinking it might contrast well with the Fly-catcher in its richly coloured flower, and be assimilated to it in that of its stem and leaves. This flower is found in damp places, in Louisiana only, at least I have not met with it in the woods of any other State.”

Audubon mistakenly believed this bird to be of a different species; it is a Hooded Warbler. He correctly identified the bird in plate 110.

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. 46-47.

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