Eating the Birds of America: Audubon's Culinary Reviews of America's Birds
usbirdhistory.com
usbirdhistory.com
[0] https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/26/victorian-zoologis...
I admire the dedication! Though question the immediate destruction of a unique artifact.
Remarkable Italian invention ...
Nothing is new
I don't know if they're technically game meats but I can buy them both commercially. Kangaroo meat is in most supermarkets, and Emu in speciality butchers.
"half emu & half pepper kangaroo, slow roasted tomato, charred peppers, lemon myrtle mayo"
It was good the last time I had it.
France's national bird is the rooster, it's not really a game bird but it's definitely eaten.
Pakistan and Gibraltar both have national birds that are partridges (the chukar and the Barbary partridge respectively).
India’s national bird is the Peacock. It is a type of pheasant and was historically a game bird that was a common delicacy, especially for the rich. It is now illegal to hunt peacock in India, but people still get it in the black market.
When I lived in Alberta we used to see huge flocks of them.
I wonder if there's a way they could be domesticated for meat production. Probably not because migratory.
I haven't tried one, of course, so perhaps reality differs from theory. But I wonder if somebody's not telling the truth here (him, or his cook).
I've been lucky enough to see White Tailed Eagles in Norway, and they too will follow boats that have fish. Although I don't think there are enough eagles for a swarm. There is a White Tailed Eagle in Poole Harbour (near to where I live on the UK sough coast), and he also only eats fish.
They're caught with nets, force-fed with grain, drowned in Armagnac, seasoned, and then cooked in their own fat. When you eat one, you hold onto its head and place it feet-first into your mouth, all while wearing a towel or napkin on your head to "shield from God's eyes the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act" [0].
0: https://web.archive.org/web/20210303221803/https://www.teleg...
Technically banned for over a decade, FYI [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Legal_status
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4642/the-last-meal-05...
Presumably the above poster is referring to the viewing of the practice of boiling the lobster alive as torture.
Because foie gras is defined as the liver of a duck or goose fattened by force feeding.
If the animal wasn’t force fed, it literally wouldn’t be foie gras.
Most other forms of animal cruelty in food production is because of industrialization. We could clean up many of those and still sell the products without so much mistreatment.
Foie gras can only be made by mistreating the animal. So it’s gonna be specifically called out.
Obviously this is totally marginal compared to the size of foie gras industry.
See
[1] https://honest-food.net/wild-foie-gras-is-real/
[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-tren...
This is not true.
Similarly, I ate drunken prawns in China, though I can't say for certain if those shrimp were stunned or actually dead.
Interesting that this apparently didn't stop him from eating one.
After a while the toxins wear off.
A shame that some of these less delectable birds are still extinct.
Thanks for sharing!
They're delicious.
In our era where foodies exist and some number of them have effectively no spending limit, I wonder if any business raises sandpipers for use in a truly rare dining experience.
John James Audubon (1785 - 1851) was a very different person. He was a naturalist, painter, and studied ornithology... and his ethics were from that age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Art_and_met...
> Audubon developed his own methods for drawing birds. First, he killed them using fine shot. He then used wires to prop them into a natural position, unlike the common method of many ornithologists, who prepared and stuffed the specimens into a rigid pose. When working on a major specimen like an eagle, he would spend up to four 15-hour days, preparing, studying, and drawing it.
I recall a story with an eagle where he was trying to asphyxiate it with smoke (so that he wouldn't damage it) - the means and the time it took to do that would be considered by today's standards to be quite cruel.
over a delectable meal of birds, no doubt.
Hunters are generally exquisitely knowlegeable about the local flora and fauna. That sort of knowledge rarely accumulates without an element of respect. Some of the most effective conservation efforts in the world arose from environmentalists and hunters allying against developers and ranchers. (And by extension, some of the biggest conservation losses from the latter driving a wedge between the former.)
Not to mention, hunting is actually very difficult (contrary to a lot of belief). You end up spending a phenomenal amount of time learning about animals, their habitat, and behavior. There ends up being deep admiration.
Not all hunters of course, some are dipshits. But such is true for any group of people.
This always bothered me. The attitude that you just walk up to some defenseless deer and shoot it and that's some unskilled cruel thing.
In reality it's hours or days in a row in a short amount of time a season is open sitting in miserable weather where hopefully the research you've done or the attempts to attract them might outweigh the fact that they can smell you from a mile away and are skittish at every sound in the world. Oh, and the practice and training you've had to do with whatever method you're using to hunt with.
Then there's the expense. Licenses, weapons, gear, time off work, you name it. I quit doing it simply because I don't have the time to invest in it as an adult.
Only in some parts of country... further west you're frequently hiking miles and miles (in miserable weather) instead.
You've got hunters whose goal is the challenge and experience.
And then you've got the assholes only interested in "How much do I have to spend to guarantee I kill a ____?"
The latter leads to baiting, driving, scouting, and all the other activities that turn "hunting" into a single trigger pull.
Unsurprisingly, those people tend to have a lot less respect for land, environment, and animal populations. No effort, no respect.
I spend a ton of time in the woods reading sign and just generally being aware & learning. Ton of hours and boot leather burned, I don’t think that works for the “pay to win” crowd
A personal note on that - I've done those things for years, seen big bucks on trail cams, bought bags of feed corn, watched them eating them on the trail cam, then gone to that spot and never seen deer in hunting season. :)
Even today, museums and universities sometimes pay for non-rare birds to be collected by shotgun. Collections are needed for certain types of comparative analysis when trying to sus out whether two birds are different species or just variety within a species.
Roosevelt believed that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was
too wasteful and inefficient
While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to
Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of
whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for
generation after generation of men and trees.
I get the feeling that todays version is more "ethical" in nature, saving animals for their own sake etc.
I'm obviously painting in very broad strokes
Audubon, On The Wings Of The World
Although on these occasions they move with the greatest regularity, yet when they are slowly advancing from south to north at an early period of the season, they fly much lower, alight more frequently, and are more likely to be bewildered by suddenly formed banks of for, or by passing over cities or arms of the sea where much shipping may be in sight. On such occasions great consternation prevails amoung them, they crowd together in a confused manner, wheel irregularly, and utter a constant cackling resembling the sounds from a disconcerted mob.
I was also unaware how long his writings on birds were - the entry about Canadian Geese is over 5000 words long:
https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/canada-goose
Regarding TFA, there is a dark humor looking back on the behavior of eating practically every animal he studied - including owls, sandpipers, and eagles - but balked at a few species such as cormorants:
The fishermen and eggers never gather their eggs, they being unfit for being eaten by any other animals than Gulls or Jagers; but they commit great havoc among the young, which they salt for food or bait. The old birds are too shy to be killed in great numbers, otherwise their feathers, although they smell strongly of fish, might be turned to account. I have never eaten Cormorant's flesh, and intend to refrain from tasting it until nothing better can be procured.
https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/double-crested-corm...
The Endangered species cook book:
https://elizabethdemaray.org/2015/06/07/recipes-from-the-end...