The Art of Birds
Artists have been moved, from at least the time of the Egyptians, to capture the likeness and the magic of birds. Their colors, movements, songs, their mysterious comings and goings with the seasons, have seemed almost supernatural, sacred. The earliest ornithologists in the United States discovered the seemingly endless species of the New World and captured their beauty, traits, and surroundings through paintings, journals, and published volumes. Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon combined their scientific observations with the wonder of bird life through artistic renderings long before the advent of cameras, binoculars, telescopic lenses, film, video, or downstreaming. Woodrow Wilson’s daughters danced as birds in Percy Mackay’s play Sanctuary: A Bird Masque, to benefit the early conservationist movement; At 90, Marian McPartland, host of NPR’s popular Piano Jazz, composed a jazz symphony honoring Rachel Carson that begins with birdsong. You can hear it here. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart kept a pet starling and incorporated parts of its singing into the finale of his Piano Concerto K. 453.
Photos by Ross Feldner
Today, birds delight people from all walks of life. Whether amateurs or professionals, they seek to capture and share their love of birds through paintings and drawings, carvings and sculpture, photographs and films, music and performance. The art of birds stirs our imagination, awe, and wonder; it touches the spiritual and the sacred within us. It is why we wish to preserve and protect these marvelous beings who miraculously appear to us along a sandy beach, in a scarlet sunset, or at our windowsill.
Ross Feldner birding at Chincoteague, VA
Rachel Carson and friends on a bird walk in Glover Archibald Park, Washington, DC.
The Rachel Carson Council seeks to instill and inspire a love of birds through art. You will find here selected images and works gathered from many sources to stir your soul and move you to action. You will also find here a place to send and share your own work and that of others. Many of the photographs that grace our web site are by RCC’s Ross Feldner, a leading nature photographer and avid birder. He and fellow birder, RCC President & CEO, Bob Musil, haunt many of the places where Rachel Carson spotted and wrote about birds from the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge Center in Maryland to Washington DC’s Rock Creek Park, Glover Archibald Park, the C&O Canal, Chincoteague Island, VA and more.
RCC contributors, like birds, are found everywhere so we receive paintings, artwork, and photos from across the nation, like this painting of a cardinal in North Carolina by RCC Fellow Kendall Jefferys. Send us and let us share your perceptions, perspectives, and images of birds, in whatever medium, whether you are a beginner, an amateur, or a polished professional.
We will look out for them at [email protected] and share them as widely as possible. Let art take flight.
‘Oh, Wow!’—Stunning Photos Offer First Known Proof of Vermilion Flycatchers Fishing The Art of Birds, The Science of Birds Art and science might be humankind’s two most noble enterprises, and they have lived culturally hand-in-hand ever since our first applications of paint to depict animals, people, and action on the walls of caves. Read more Past Issues of the RCC Bird Watch and Wonder
The Latest on The Art of Birds
An Arizona photographer’s images of Vermilion Flycatchers and Black Phoebes catching and eating fish—and one unlucky lizard—provide a rare glimpse into a little-known side of both birds. Capturing a rare behavior is the highlight of any nature photographer’s day in the field, but capturing a behavior that has never been documented before? That’s a whole different level. Read more
Art and science are two great human endeavors driven by parallel forces: our persistent curiosity and our vivid imagination. Both have long found a home at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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