Band-tailed Pigeon Princeton Audubon Limited Edition - Posters and Prints
Columba fasciata Flora: Cornus nuttalli Print size: 26 1/4" x 39 1/4"; image size: 28" x 20 1/2" Produced 1985 - Princeton Audubon Limited Edition This print is based on a composition probably painted in the winter of 1836-37 in Charleston, S.C. Maria Martin drew the dogwood branch, a drawing most interesting to botanists since the accompanying text in the Ornithological biography contains the first recorded description of the western, or mountain, dogwood, Cornus nuttalli, which has six involuted bracts instead of the four of the well-known eastern species. Audubon wrote: "In my plate are represented two adult birds, placed on the branch of a superb species of dogwood, discovered by my learned friend, Thomas Nuttall, Esq., when on his march toward the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and which I have graced with his name." These pigeons lay only one egg to the nest, and breed usually only once a year, the lowest reproductive rate of any North American game bird except the extinct passenger pigeon. The enactment in 1913 of the Federal law for the protection of the migratory birds saved this species.
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