John James Audubon (1780-1851), self-trained naturalist, sup¬ 
ported his family by drawing portraits. His father was a French 
naval officer and his mother partly Spanish. He spent a few years 
in France where he gave his main energy to music, drawing, and 
natural history during the period when he was in' training for the 
navy. 
After his return to America about 1800, he became a wandering 
naturalist, ever seeking for new birds to study. As he went from 
place to place, he would pay for his lodgings or a new pair of 
shoes by making a portrait of some local celebrity or even the 
shoemaker himself. 
His most famous work consists of one-thousand and sixty-five 
natural sized, colored figures of American birds, the publication 
of which alone took ten years and cost $100,000 Whenever you 
visit a large library, ask to be shown Audubon s Birds, the most 
noted book on American birds. 
