Plate 155
Havell CCXXI
Mallard
(Anas platyrhynchos)
“This large, easily tamed fowl is the forebear of almost every variety of domesticated duck. But, as Audubon observed, “How brisk are all his motions compared with those of his brethren that waddle across your poultry-yard! how much more graceful in form and neat in apparel! The duck at home is the descendant of a race of slaves . . . But the freeborn, the untamed duck of the swamps, - see how he springs on wing, and hies away over the woods.” Audubon drew these mallards when he was in Louisiana or Mississippi, sometime between 1821 and 1825. The two drakes are easily distinguished by the coloration of their heads, “glittering with emerald-green.” The plants in the foreground were drawn separately and pasted onto the composition.
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.
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