Narrow margins, one closed tear in margin, else a fine copy

"The Snowy Owl hunts during the day, as well as in the dusk. Its flight is firm and protracted, although smooth and noiseless. It passes swiftly over its hunting ground, seizes its prey by instantaneously falling on it, and generally devours it on the spot. When objects of its pursuit are on wing [sic]... it gains upon them by urging its speed, and strikes them somewhat in the manner of a Peregrine Falcon. It is fond of the neighbourhood of rivers and small streams, having in their course cataracts or shallow rapids, on the borders of which it seizes on fishes, in the manner of our wild cat" - Audubon. "At home in the far North, the snowy owl sits upon its hillock, surveys its bleak domain, and intones its baleful booming to the polar sky. It has few enemies, chiefly the arctic fox and the Eskimos, who find the eggs of the Ookpikjuak very palatable. The key to life in the Arctic is the lemming, the little mouse-like mammal that increases so rapidly even its natural enemies cannot keep it in check. Periodically, when it reaches saturation, there is a population crash. In peak years, the snowy owl waxes fat on the lemming horde, but when the depression comes it must leave the barren tundra and seek food elsewhere. About every fourth year flights of these big ghostly owls drift into the United States; at longer intervals invasions of thousands pour across the border" - R.T & V.M. Peterson, AUDUBON'S BIRDS OF AMERICA (London, 1981, no. 237).

Audubon described observing owls in many locations throughout the United States, including a specimen he shot one winter near Louisville, Kentucky, "perched on the broken stump of a tree." Perhaps he had this particular moment in mind when he composed the present picture.

From the first edition of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, plate CXXI (121 )Inventory #29753