Thinking Sideways: Washington's Eagle

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Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as usual, joined by Joe. All right, I thought Joe was going at their honey. Sorry. Well, this week we have yet another mystery to talk about, as we do every week, and this week we are going to cover a ornithological mystery. It's a bird mystery, a mystery most foul. Yeah, it's gonna happen. Happen, can't help. They're gonna be good. Let's got the funds out of

the way. Now, I don't really have any What we're gonna talk about is we're gonna talk about Washington's eagle. But wait, Steve, what did anybody suggest this story? Why? Indeed, Joe, they did. This is well scripted dialogue for having right now. Yep, this was suggested. This was suggested by Nick quite a while back. I've actually been looking into this one on and off for the last gosh two years now. So thanks to Nick for sending in the suggestion, and also

a couple of thanks. I want to thank both Alyssa and Alec. They were experts that I consulted with for this episode. And then, though she probably doesn't listen, phoebe over at the Rare book room at the Multlama County Library because she helped me out a bunch took. Thanks and Alec. Yeah, so let's tell you what the mystery is in the briefest, and then we'll start diving into

the details. The mystery itself is that in eighteen thirty six John James Audubon, Yes, that Audubon recorded a large sea eagle, which he named Falco Washingtony bird of Washington is what that's is in his book The Birds of America. The problem is that no one has seen that bird since, and other than Audubon's paintings and a few other people's accounts, there's no real physical evidence of this bird ever having existed. Yeah, it's weird, and he only painted it once. Right on

painting of it. He has one painting from one specimen that he had. He's cited it multiple times, but he only did the one. But we're going to talk about the Birds of America and he and there he typically only did each bird one time, so it's not surprising that there's only one agreed. Okay, So let's back up the beginning where the order of events are gonna go here tonight is we're gonna talk about Audubon. We'll talk about his book The Birds of America, and finally eagles

in general, and then the Washington eagle. That way, it kind of all makes sense. Okay. I know I'm weird that way to start with Audubon. Excuse me. I've been to the Audubon Society, and I consider myself an expert. Okay, not really, what is that? Me? Go ahead. I was just with autom On Society like two weeks ago. Yeah, I have old Audubon books at my house. We're all experts.

Birds outside. Can we keep going? Okay, thank you. In five Audubon was born, though at that time his name was genre Beane, and he was born in the French colony of I really hope I get this right. Let's Kas, which is in modern day Haiti. The French were everywhere, just like the English and the Spanish, and it was one of their colonies. Of course, Audubon was one of

many children that his father, Jean Audubon, had sired. It just happened to be that his mother was one of John's mistresses, which technically makes him a bastard, which is only important much later on in our story in terms of something to prove. But the short version of his life is that he moved from Haiti to France to live with his father and his father's wife, and then eventually he left France and he moved to the United States in order to avoid serving in the Napoleonic Wars.

And when he got to the US, he changed his name from genrebine to John James Audubon so that it didn't sound so freend and shoot, because there was a little bit of an anti French sentiment at the time. There was. Yeah, So after moving here in eighteen oh three, Audubon tries his hand at several different occupations and businesses, as as many men of the era, semiwealthy young men of the time. Did I believe we called that a renaissance man. That might be one of the words that

you could want phrases. It kind of depends, you know, I mean, if they're like you know, usually it's more like just odd jobs. Well, yeah, a lot of different occupations. He failed that. A lot of occupations is a great way to say it, because that's what it was. Through most of his life. Audubon was a lover of nature, and he spent a great deal of time walking around and studying what he saw and it and occasionally shooting it um and he said his preference was for birds

above all. Else Where he had always drawn what he saw in nature, and he continued to do that when he got to the States, though at that time it was a hobby. It wasn't as if it was an occupation. For him though, you know, like some a lot of people do with their hobbies, he traveled to see different birds in different parts of the country, so it was, you know, it was really involved hobby. He likes his birds, he did. Audubon was a skilled artist. He initially did

a lot of his work with charcoals and pencils. He did later learn to paint, which was how we get a lot of the images that are in the Birds of America. They were paintings originally, we should should we specify that The Birds of America is a book paintings of yes and a field guide that's further in. Okay, Sorry, you've just referred to it a couple of times when I realized, no, it's okay. The brief version is John

James Audubon. He makes a giant folio book which is called The Birds of America, which is a catalog of paintings of birds that he did in this country. It's also got some other associal a text with it that he did later on. The one that I saw that was, I'm guessing at least a hundred years old, was a five volume set of just writings and no images. A lot. But if you have a copy of Birds of America laying around. Uh, please send it to us. I'll give you the post office box. At the end of the episode,

we'll take it off your hands. Yeah, it would totally do that for you. We're givers like that. Yeah, because those things are worth like what nothing. Yeah, that's that's why they should send them to us. Okay, that's all right, No, so um so he's he's doing his art. He also eventually he learns taxidermy, which is really important for him because it's the early eighteen hundreds and the only way that you can get an animal that you can paint or draw or study is by killing it, by shooting it.

It's not the conservation era like it is today. And I know that that sounds very contrary to the Audubon Society that most people know today, But again, this was the early eighteen hundreds, completely different critter in the Audubon society wasn't something that started until I think nineteen o five. Yeah, but I don't think too many people don't know that that Audubon was an avid bird shooter. He loved to shoot birds, that's what he did. That's how he got

his specimens. Well, it wasn't just say, even if it wasn't for specimens six, he really liked to shoot birds. And if you look at at the birds and in the Birds of America, you'll see that every one of them has a bullet hole in it. Now you're just making okay, number two being for Devon. Okay, So back to Audubon. So he goes on. He goes about living his life and painting birds, and then in eighteen twenty he started doing the paintings for what he would eventually

call The Birds of America. It was you know, he wasn't a rich guy, so he couldn't just fund this project himself. So he had to get investors. But he couldn't find any investors in the States. So what he does instead is, after he exhausts the investors in the States and they won't give him any cash, he goes to Europe. He winds and dines a few people and

they agreed to invest in the book. The book is published not as a single volume, but instead it is done and under a subscription basis, and it is the images and all of the stuff that's associated with it comes out between eighteen twenty seven and eighteen thirty eight. Well, it was a great way to fund it because you know it's expensive. Because here's the thing about the Birds of America. I am not exaggerated when I say it is a huge book. It is gigantic. So here's the

dimensions on the images themselves. They're thirty nine by twenty six inches, which in metric is ninety nine by six centimeters. That's a big page. And I mean you could literally use it for a coffee table. You could. Um, God, what is the term. It wasn't the it wasn't the elephant. It was something like the double pack of Derm edition or something like that is what they called it. Because it was so big it was it was real. I saw that. I was like, why oh, because it's such

a huge stinking book. Um. Now, the great thing about doing something that size is it allowed Audubon to present the birds that he was painting at true scale, it life size scale, so little songbirds were at their normal size. Something like the Washington's eagle was actually at scale or dang near scale, because he had so much room for it. Actually, even even that I looked that big, I think the Washington's ego might have been just a hair tooo big.

I think I just realized. Actually Washington Eagle was a bad example, but there are quite a few birds. Almost all of them are at scale because he used a grid system for his his paintings and then a grid in front of what he was painting to keep everything scale proportionately. So he was trying to do it as

accurately as possible, which is great. Yea. When the book was done, it had it used four hundred and thirty five plates, which for anybody who doesn't know how the printing process works, to use a plate to press the black ink into the page. And so there was four hundred and thirty five individual images and once they were printed in black and white, then they were hand water colored. So that was how all of those were done, which is part of the reason it took so long. Were

so damned expensive. Yeah, So that's that's what the Birds of America, the book itself, that's a little bit of the history on it and what Audubon was doing. He said that his intention was to literally catalog every bird in this nation if he could, and I mean it's eleven years, that's a lot of time and trying elevel in painting and hunting, literally hunting four specimens. Moving forward, that then brings us to the time that he showed

the world Washington's eagle. Audubon said he observed the bird total of five times in nature and took one specimen, and he shot, He shot one, he shot, killed, and stuffed. He said that he felt the bird was noble and reflected the character of the first US president, so he named the bird after him. That's why it's got the name Washington. And here's what his writing say. It is indisputably the noblest bird of its genus that has yet been discovered in the United States. I shot it, that's

not in this text. Think I trust I shall be allowed to honor with the name of one yet nobler, who is the savior of his country, and whose name will ever be dear to it. To those who may be curious to know my reason, I can only say that, as the new World gave me birth and liberty, the great man who endured ensured its independence is next to my heart. He had a nobility of mind and a generosity of soul such as here seldom possessed. He was brave,

so was the eagle like it too. He was the terror of his foes at his fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic soarings of the mightiest of the feathered tribe. If America has reason to be proud of her Washington, so has she to be proud of her great Eagle. It's a long way to say. He really liked this bird. He like the president too, apparently yea, well, Washington was dead, so no, he couldn't impress Washington. Washington was long gone at this point. Could have been one

of those like, no, really, I love America. That's very true. Could have been. Audubon says that he saw the eagle five times over a series of years. He saw first on the Mississippi or first on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers near Grand Tower, Illinois, then near Evansville, Indiana, Henderson, Kentucky, Clarksville, Indiana, and then Mound City, Illinois. It was the bird that he saw in Kentucky. That's the one that he shot. He said that he saw somebody had slaughtered pigs, I

think earlier that day or the day before, something like that. Yeah, and he was it was going after the scraps. Yeah, as eagles will do. And so he happened to be there with his gun and he got himself a sample. Poor eagle, Poor eagle. I gotta say, if this thing really truly did exist and it's he might have shot one of the last existing specimens possibly could be. Yeah. Um, so the sample, the or the snut sample, the specimen the bird that Audubon shot and then dubbed the Washington eagle.

This particular bird was really big. The dimensions on this animal are that it stood three ft seven inches tall, that converts to a hundred and sixteen centimeters, and it had a wingspan of ten ft two inches, which is just about three meters. So to put that in that's big. And to put that into contact with another big bird that most people have seen, if not in person, you've seen an imagery and on the television, is the ball leagle,

which is the national bird of the United States. The ball leagle on average stands somewhere between two ft four inches to three ft four inches, which is seventy two hundred and two centimeters tall, and as a typical wingspan between five ft ten inches to seven ft six inches, which converts to one point eight or two point three meters. Like that's a significant difference between those. The size of these two creatures, it's still not as big as the

California condor, though you didn't bring another bird in. I'm not saying it's the biggest bird ever. I'm just saying their wingspans get the average nine point eight feet, which is three meters. For those of you who are wondering, beat, I think this is an average you're right, okay, fine, about the same size as a condo. Yeah, it's about

the same size, which huge, Yeah, which are absolutely big birds. Now, what's really interesting about the specimen that Audubon had is he said that it was a male bird, and when it comes to eagles, the males of the species are the smaller of the two sexes, which means that the

females would have been even larger most most birds. Actually, yeah, yeah, that typically is the way it is in uh them, Actually, with like a lot of species, Well, yeah, it's it's I'm not gonna say, well, I don't I can't think of what the division is, but there is certain animal kingdoms where it is the female is the larger of the two, and there are others where it is the male And I don't understand why that is. I'm sure that that is a huge, long conversation and investigation that

I just don't have the brain powerful I don't. I don't think it's that. I don't. Yeah, I'm I'm guessing that's not it. Um Okay, So let's get back to the Washington eagle, because there's a couple of more things that he describes that are unusual. One is that he describes the tarsus of the bird as having uniform scaling,

which tarsus is the bones and the feet. He's talking about the skin on the bird's feet, because if you look at like normal eagles, they've got some really big scales up the front of each toe, and then they're kind of their scales all over the foot, whereas if you look like a songbird, it's got kind of pebbly skin or like chickens. They they're the skin on their feet almost looked like it has rings to it. So

it's a different skin type. And this uniform pattern that he describes doesn't match up with any other eagle that is known, doesn't match up with another type of bird. I have not seen that description on any bird of prey. Because if you think about it. A bird of prey uses its feet to catch living animals that are likely to thrash and fight back, so it needs some defenses there.

Ok that doesn't mean that there aren't big birds that have uniformally um scaled feet, but I didn't see a whole lot on that in the bird of prey, for I mean, condors have Sorry, I'm just gonna keep going. They have that like kind of scaly. I mean, they're scavengers mostly, so they have that kind of scaly type the big scales on the little scales more like pebbly like the songbird birds. Can I mean, would you describe that as that's pebbly, right, I would, Yeah, that's that's

kind of pebbly. Yeah, just saying yep, continuing to say, and you're looking at the California California, which are super rare and endangered. Just going to throw that out there. Don't go playing Audubon and like shooting one. Really don't do that. I really don't do that anyway. Sorry, Okay, Okay, that's a good example of formulating a bird that would have the kind of feet. But they are they're scavengers, they're not really hunters. They're not they're not birds fish

as a primary source of their food. Yeah, Okay. Audubon decides that the Washington eagle is what is known as a sea eagle, which puts it in the genus God. I hope I get this right as well, Hayley. A TuS is how I have phonetically written, So we're going to run with that. In that family are birds like the bald eagle. There's the white bellied sea eagle in Australia, Asian palace fish eagle, or the white tailed eagle in Eurasia.

There's eight species in this family, and the commonality is that they tend to have white plumage on them, but it's not always in the same place because they're literally scattered all over the globe and they're generally the same size these birds roughly. Yeah, they're all larger birds, large birds of prey. It's definitely not play. They're not birds of play. I mean they kind of are. They probably play when they're not too busy killing things. I feel

like I've reached my slaughter quota for the day. Let's play bird. Yes, I mean, you know, writing the what are they? What they what are they called? Right right in the Yeah, the plumes of hot air. Ye remember columns, the thermals, the thermals. There you go writing the thermals has to be a lot of fun. Yeah, that's cool.

That's a really long Actually, they're probably they're they're just like sitting there, like going up and up, and if they I'm really getting over, I'm not even flapping wild wings. I'm sure that's what they think. Okay, So all sea eagles basically the same size. They're they're roughly all the same size within you know, within a spread. They all, as I said, they all hunt for their food. Primarily they get it out of the water. So they hunt and feed on fish. Now, if we think about bald

eagles in particular, they they're semi scavengers, semi bullybirds. They don't care if they find the fish already dead or they're also pro known to chase other birds away. Like osprey will catch a fish and the bald eagles will harass them so much that they'll leave the fish behind to get away. Ye. I actually saw that happen right out here in Ross Island one time. I saw a couple of bald eagles going after an osprey. Yeah, there are also really good at catching fish. Are much better

than bald eagles. Yea there. I mean they'll also the other that they're like most birds of prey. They'll also eat mammals. So they are really opportunistic. If there is a meal to be had and it is easy to get, they will get it. That is their plan, that is their method. That's that's what I hear. It's like, you know, like in place it's like Alaska where bald eagles are thick. You can't let your catty, your dog out because they

will carry it away. I actually had friends who this was twenty plus years ago, worked in a cannary and said that the place was just lousy with bald eagles around the canny. You couldn't get rid of them because they were just scavenging because we just made it way too each Yeah, oh yeah, it was easy. It was easy lunch, easy dinner. Why would you leave? So something that we should note about the description of the eagle from Audubon, then this will go because I know lot

of people. Now, Devon, You've got a bunch of people thinking, well, I wonder if it was the California condor he was looking at. Except there's the there's a region thing going on here, because there's California condor, which you're talking about. But when Audubon first observed this bird, it was on the north Mississippi, and he was with a trapper who told him that the bird was rare, and it was known to obviously hunt fish, but also to follow hunters

the scavenge. But it was mainly known to be in the Great Lakes and kind of the larger northeastern continental United States on the Mississippi, the Ohios, you know, to Kentucky obviously, where Audubon got his specimen from, Like it lived in that region, which is a much more colder climate than you would find with the California condor. I mean, I do want to keep in mind we're talking the trade,

right right, I mean right some years ago. I mean again, I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep going back to Califor a condor. They found bones of the condor in like Florida, they found bones like up pretty far north. And again that's probably from like five hundred years ago, not two hundred.

But humans have had a lot to do with the diminishment of ranges of most many creatures, almost everything really, and so I just I want to continue to frame that we are talking two hundred years ago and that I'm not going to seriously argue it's California condor because they don't look anything like eagles, but I am going to say that, like, I want to keep that in mind. Yeah, yeah, no,

I got you totally, totally. And when we get into theories, which is going to happen shortly, Yeah, that's when we'll get into That's when we can have a lot of that discussion because that does play into a lot of the theories, which there are not that many theories, but there is a lot of stuff in them. So let's uh, there's just a little bit here that I have to

go through, and then we'll get into the theories. Because so far, nothing that I've told people, for the most part, about the Washington Eagle really makes it sound much different than the Bald eagle except for maybe some coloring things. Except I haven't told you the whole story. First, Audubon was basically, as I said, the only one to officially record seeing one of these eagles, so that's a problem. Based on his accounts, though, it was unlike its cousins,

and it didn't have any white plumage. Well, you said it was a male. The one that he shot was a male. Yes, I was just gonna say. Female bald eagles are brown bald eagles. No, the coloring does not depend on the sex you maybe, yeah, you're thinking the wrong bird. No, no, no, I want to. I want everybody to hear what a foul error you made. Okay, but so no so that Yeah, it kind of does. But the thing is is that it doesn't have any

of that white plumage. Uh. The third problem, of course, as I said, is there's no surviving specimens because the few that supposedly existed have either been lost, destroyed by

time and poor storage, or maybe fires. The fourth problem is from the description that Audubon gave other than the size of the bird, hit matches a pretty well with a juvenile bald eagle, which yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna get into the bald egle thing because the golden eagle I don't think is the right size, but neither

is the bald eagle. Lastly, the other thing that you will see in the reading about this is the fact that Audubon did identify several birds, several new species that in fact didn't exist, so he may have possibly occasionally just kind of made it up as he went along. There's a possibility that he may have fudged it a couple of times. No, that's not that's not it doesn't work. Yeah, there was that time the locals brought in that that thing.

It was a weird bird that had like the beaver head and everything, and and uh, they were totally punking was April fools, but he put it in the book. Anyway, Joe's made up with the Jackalopa birds. Essentially, there's what he's done. Um, it would be the beaver well done. Okay, so that is all of our story, and we should probably go ahead and get into theories. We should probably fly right into that, but we're going to take a nest for a minute and have a word from our sponsors.

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metaphors bad Yeah, and you actually got results? Kidding. That's what the internet is made of, is that? So I didn't need the internet? Okay, okay, So let's get into theories. We're getting into the theory. Number one. Theory number one is the Washington Eagle wasn't real. Just no, it just wasn't it. Basically. So here's here's what it is. Is. The reasons that this theory is around is that on Upon wasn't popular with everyone. I mean, he he was popular,

but he had a lot of critics. And some of those critics work his contemporaries, and some of them are modern day critics, you know, I mean, viewed through the lens of time, He's he's revered as this great man, but you know that happens to all these people at his time, he was just a regular guy who had foibles in his personality, and some people liked him and

some people didn't. And the people who didn't went after him because of that, because he could self aggrandize and he could sound like he was exaggerating, and that rub people the wrong ways. Sometimes century flame wars, yes, and they were literal, you know, they're they're that writing in publication kind of flame war that we see all through history.

There's a couple of guys that didn't like him. We're writing articles in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, and this is between eighteen one and eighteen thirty five, just just slamming him, and in parts at times they would later on go to talk about Washington's eagle. They didn't like him. This is today known as the iTunes review. Yeah, tell

me about it. Hello. You know, so for everybody that's listening to this episode and you want to give us a low iTunes rating, please do so through Loudens Magazine of Natural History and iTunes will receive it and log it appropriately. Agreed to House dot gov and just make some threats. Okay, So, those like I said, they accused him of a lot of things, one of which was they said he was sloppy in his work, that his

measurements were bad. And obviously this bird was just a juvenile bald eagle that just happened to be big, just happened to be a big juvenile. That happens. So it's funny you say that, because the juvenile bald eagle technically, in its wingspan is larger than the adult by a little bit, and it just happens to be because of the shapes of the long you know, the long wings on the long feathers on the wings that come around

at the tips. They have a slight curve to him that adds just a little bit more and it makes its wingspan a little bit longer than or wider than that of the adult, but not significantly, not by the matter of feet. No, but I mean, yes, there are big and small versions of everything. I mean, we humans except their outliers there, you know, there are things that are there, are they're gonna They're always going to be

birds that are bigger and birds that are smaller. And yes, it would have been extraordinary for that bird to be that big, but extraordinary things happen. I mean, there are humans that are what seven something tall, tall, what's the tallest team in that's ever existed, And then there are humans that are like three ft tall. That's the thing.

There's a wide spectrum. You are right, as Joe said, there are outliers, and I cannot dispute that that could very well have been or it could have been that he was exposed to a little pile of radioactive plutonium and that made him grow bigger, because that's what radiation does. Eagle Man, that's why he was called Washington's Eagles, because that's a pretty good superhero name because he because he had the ruff old front of his shirt and instead

of feathers. Yeah, no, this is not happening. So basically, so we're talking about the fact that this bird could have been an outlier, and they say that maybe it wasn't It wasn't an outlier. Actually, what they say is that he did bad measurements and that he padded things so that it looked more impressive when it was in

his book, which plenty of people have done that. I mean, we've there are so many examples of people making stuff up and writing it in a book and then being called out later on and people finding out, oh, that didn't happen. This isn't actually the memoir of so and so. You made all that stuff up see Oprah, not Oprah, but the person that was on Oprah one of them. Yes, for a second, let's go back to the bald eagle, and specifically I want to talk about the juvenile bald eagle,

because that's what his critics are all saying. There was obviously it was a juvenile bald eagle. Is we're jbe So if you don't know, let me describe the juvenile versus the adult bald eagle, not in size but in appearance. So the adults have a white the white plumage on their head, and they have a yellow beak, and they have yellow feet. The juveniles are brown, so their head is brown, their beak is blackish blue or dark colored, and their feet are dark colored. They're dark brownish black.

As they progress to maturity, they gain more of the white in their head until it's full the yellow. Because a bird's beak, it's like your fingernail, It grows out, you know, Bird's beaks are constantly growing. The yellow as they mature appears and then makes its way through the entire beak until it's continuously yellow and with their feet the scales change and molt over time, and then the

yellow comes in and they're not dark. The rest of their body is typically brown, but they have white feathers randomly scattered about like that. It's forfer two as a speckled pattern, and depending on the bird, because they're all different, some of them they look like it's, um, it looks like a you know, kind of a connected dot thing. There's a little white feathers everywhere, and some there's very few, if almost none, but that's dependent upon where they are

in their stage of development. Okay, okay, So that's why people say, well, it's gotta be the juvenile because of the fact that there's so much, you know, it's just the description. If you find one without the white, that's got to be the right bird. I'm kind of kind of what are you What are you thinking here? I don't know, you want you want to keep going and

be okay, continue on. So we've just described what the juveniles look like in pretty good detail, and people are saying, well, obviously, you know, as we said before, Audubon shot a very big one and it was a really really big one, and of course it didn't have any white feathers on it, because it just happened to be one that didn't have a whole lot of white feathers on it. If you can, and we're going to post a photo of this online, Audubon's painting is available. One of the prints out of

the book is available. There's a great high res scan of the of the page from the folio, and it's phenomenal to look at. But when you look at that bird, there's no white on it. And and I will stay I will state now that it is also very dangerous to rely on a single painting of an animal and say that is definitively what they all looked like. Yeah, I I started to draw conclusions from it myself, until I caught myself and realized that was the wrong thing

to do. But when you look at that and you see the images of the juvenile asy, you think, well, that that could be it. But the thing is Audubon knew that the bald eagles juvenile was brown and white and the adult had the white plumage on its head. He was aware of that. He had observed them for years. In his writing, he says he talks about the juvenile sea eagles like he knew what they were. While some of his contemporaries thought they were two different birds. He

had always argued that they were one. So to say that he couldn't identify it is a little weird when he kept saying, oh, no, that's that's the juvenile he gets it. So there's there's holes in the argument of his critics. I would agree with that, but but what But there's so one of the things that said in the beginning is maybe the fact that he literally just made it up. We talked about he could have just

completely fabricated it. There's a really great story that substantiates possibly that he did that because he had done that before. Have either of you ever heard of Constantine Rafinesque of course the movie star? Yeah no, nothing, nothing movie star,

I have not. Constantine was a French naturalist and he he is a He was very prolific in hunting for and finding and naming new species of animals implants, And in eighteen eighteen he had seen some of the work that Audubon was doing and some of his paintings and drawings, and he decided that the best thing to do was attached himself to Audubon for a while, since that guy was always going out into unexplored areas and he could tag along and find all these other unknown creatures and

plants and name them and have it underneath his catalog of things that he found a name a really good buddy movie here. Well, I don't know, because Constantine was was not a not a normal guy. I mean, the best thing I've ever heard is the descript of him is Audubon got a letter of introduction when he showed up, and that a letter of introduction described him as an odd fish. He was kind of a weird guy. He's described as an erratic genius, and most people did not

like him. They just couldn't take him. But Audubon seemed to kind of take a shine to him. And I think it's because the antics that this guy went through all the time. Like apparently in the first month that they were together, Constantine destroyed Audubon's violin because a bat flew in the window and he was convinced that the bat was a new species, and he was trying to swap the bat down with the violin, and obviously he hits something that was not a bat, destroyed it. Constantine

happened to be rich. I do not believe that he was an exceptionally rich man. He's gonna say that could explain why struggling Audubon was like, hey, yeah, yeah, I think they were. I think they were at the same level. You know, they weren't. You know, one wasn't socio economically higher than the other. They were. They were kind of, um, what's the word I'm looking for, they were the same contemporaries. I can't think of the word I'm looking for. But

they were the same thing in this that scale. Stop looking at me like that, you're laughing at me. I can't think of the word. It's also, you know, the same reason Audubon kept Constantino alive. That's why we keep you around too. I know, I know, I really that's why we keep you alive too, Constantine alive. I'm sorry, Okay, So let's get back to Constantine and Audubon. Constantine was very,

very prolific in his naming. He has, to his credit named ninety four hundred species, ninety four hundred individual plants and animals that he discovered were unique and gave a name to. So the guy did this his entire life, it's pretty intense. He was also a sucker, and I say that because in the time that he spent with Audubon, Audubon decided to make him the butt of a joke. And I don't think that Audubon probably intended for that

joke to go as far as it did. But what he did is in their travels, he he started describing animals that he had seen in the America's and those included which, by the way, Constantine recorded all of these and named all of these creatures. But he recorded eleven fish, nine rodents, three snails, two birds, to plants, and one

mollusk that did not exist anywhere. Uh no, but there was like the big guy jumping rat, and there was a it was these fish like like it took thirty fifty years for some of these things to be the first ones to be found as not real. And oh my god, how because I mean the scales on one of the fish were described as bulletproof. Who what? Who thinks that's real? But somehow it got into the because Constantine recorded it, and I don't think Audubon expected him

to actually do it. It's unfortunate for Constantine because now years later people are going through and reviewing everything that he cited to see if it's real, and especially the stuff during the time of Audubon is highly suspect. So he pulled people's legs. He made a joke and it got out of hand, and so people say, well, obviously he lied and he did this big thing. So he very well could have just been playing a joke on the world. Oh I need one more bird, I'll I'll

make one up and squeeze it into the book. Whether that's all he could have been, I don't know why. Well, the only reason okay, so the reason that I can I can think of why. The Birds of America was a publication. It came out by subscription at a regular interval, and I am guessing that he had a consistent number of creatures of images in there each time. And what if he's fallen short. Oh hell, I need twenty two

and I have one. I guess for me though, it's like, if you're going to make up a bird, why not just be like, that's a that's another small little brown bird that would definitely be easier to get away. It's super easy to get away. They're not nearly so noticeable, they're not how do we find it. I'll just go out in the woods and look why it went. And I didn't see it while they're small. Yeah, well but but but the exact opposite, you know, he could say,

well you can't see it. Well, they're super rare, the trap of the Canadian trapper that I talked to you said, they're very rare, and you don't see them very often. So you know, no wonder you have come across one in the natural world. They're they're just super rare. Guys. Yeah, it's entirely possible. It's it was already out his way to extinction. That and that is that is something that

we're going to talk about. It we should talk about in the theory that we're about to go into, which is indeed the Washington's Eagle was real, but this could go either place. Really, never did anybody ever consult any the local native tribes about this thing? You think that they would have, like, especially if it had been centrist before much more numerous, you'd think, I do not I in the right. In Audubon's writing about the Washington Eagle, I only he I only saw mention of the Canadian trapper,

And then one or two other um European transplants. He doesn't talk about talking to the native at all in regards to this particular bird. Yeah, you would think they would have been aware of it, you would think, And that actually is later on in the theories. It's actually something that comes up later. So let's talk about unless you guys have anything else for it didn't actually exist. No, no,

not really, okay, making sure it's going to it's real. Obviously, the assessment that Audubon made that the Washington eagle was a distinct species if according to this is real. And the reason is that the reason that we don't see it anymore is we've just talked about, which is that a number of times now that it went extinct because everybody said, you very rarely saw it. You you couldn't ever, you know, once in a great while. You came across him, and he just got lucky to have a specimen to

include in the Birds of America, possibly the last. And as a matter of fact, there are a half dozen birds in the Birds of America, uh that are now extinct. So he was the one who recorded some birds that are no longer in existence, one of which is a really great example of how Europeans coming to this continent. May we're responsible for it. And that's the passenger pigeon. If if anybody doesn't know the story of the passenger pigeon, it's really interesting and I want to give I want

to share it real fast because it's very applicable. So the passenger pigeon was it was prolific all over the North American continent from the Rocky or it's not the yeah, it's the Rockies east pretty much. They lived in the eastern half of this this continent, and they were they were amazingly prolific. They're described as flying over they being

big flocks. They would dark in the sky for an entire day and only leave behind their droppings, like the birds would never stop, but they block out the sky because the flock was so huge, big old storms exactly when they were hunting, and they said you could you could kill more than six with one blast from a shotgun, uh huh shooting. They were so so thick, and they were a great food source. I mean, people loved them.

Predators loved them because they came to town and it was free meat and you could just go crazy just killing these things. And they that was fine in terms of from the biological or the survival standpoint of the passenger pigeon, because they used a survival strategy called predators satiation, which is all the predators come in and they eat

a bunch of you until they are full. But the population is so huge that you can lose that small percentage to satisfy the local predators, and your population doesn't stoff her. I can just imagine though, if you know, if you want of the one of the pigeons and the briefings, and you're going like, excuse me, why why do I love the jokes? Is the pigeon and the briefing? Because I immediately thought of a World War two pigeon with a little metal helmet. They're all sitting there and

this guy's got his PowerPoint, excuse me? And who gets to be who gets to be the goat here? Uh? Really do? Yeah? But but the thing is with um So this theory or this practice of predator satiation, the

passenger pigeon isn't the only creature that doesn't. The cicadas, you know, the ones that come out every you know, a dozen or set thirteen or seventeen years or whatever it is, there are so many of them that in a night, every predator in the area is stuffed full, and there are still just gods and gods and gods of them around. I'm pretty sure rabbits. I'm kidding. No,

I'm kidding. Okay. So the point is, though, is that it worked well, and they survive, fived, and they thrived, except that when Europeans came to this country a couple of things happened. One, we were netting them, we were shooting them, we were destroying their nesting grounds. We were consuming them at a faster rate than they could reproduce. There were actually guys who they were hunting clubs, and they would get a telegraph to say where the flock was.

They would hop on a train so that they go there and start hunting and shooting and killing them, and they would follow the flock using the train lines. So suddenly they were using technology to completely outpace the rate at which these things could reproduce and naturally survive. And I God, I think the last passenger pigeon, I think it died in the late eight hundreds. If I remember wild or in the zoom that it was in, it was in captivity. It was I was just looking at

it like night. She was like it was nineteen. It was in the tens or twenties, but but it was by that time there was so much damage done to the population they couldn't revive. Okay, so now think of the story of the passenger pigeon, and then let's think about the Washington eagle, which is already a bird that maybe in decline because of Europeans coming to this country, and we are now we're disturbing their hunting grounds, were disturbing their nesting grounds because unlike say a bald eagle,

which nests in a tree. According to Audubon, these birds nested on the ground. That so hunters and foresters and the animals that we bring with us, that that get loose and go wild, go eat their eggs and destroy their young. And you can see this recipe for disaster for a what I would consider possibly a rather niche

species of birds of prey. Suddenly who screwed the whole thing up showing up on the Although you know, you know, you know, extinction is a part of the whole evolution process, it might have been that they weren't particularly adaptable, and frankly, you know, if I were an ego, I would prefer to put my nest up high in a tree rather than having it somewhere on the ground. I think that makes sense. Yeah, obviously they want the most sensible. Well,

I mean, I don't know. It seems like if they were that big and the they were kind of hunting into that not as much, you know, not the coasts not. It doesn't sound like really more rivers and stuff like that. It's possibly they had actually adapted to eat more mammals.

And so if you put your nest on the ground so that you're young, like you just kill something and kind of drag it over to the nest so you're young, just kind of hop out of the nest and they can eat the meat off of whatever instead of having to fly it up to them and regurds to you know, I don't know, maybe I don't, but again, it's not it's not great. Yeah. Well, okay, let me let me clarify this. When I say they made their nests in the ground, Joe actually said it properly, which is it's

on cliffs. It's not like they're just in the middle of a field. Yeah, but you can still drag something like over to it. But well, eagles birds typically most of the birds of that genus, can only carry something that is half or less of their body weight. I'm thinking like rabbits and stuff like deer. Well, but but what but I'm getting at is that I don't know that they would necessarily whether it was in a tree or on a cliff, it would matter because they would

fly in and bring it to the nest. I mean, you know, bald eagle doesn't drag a rabbit corpse up a tree. That's true, No, I know. I'm just thinking more like for the like, I don't know, you can't necessarily fit a rabbit carcass in a nest. Have you ever seen a bald I'm just saying, like, I don't know what their nests look like, the giant you know, the bald eagles. Yes, I'm just saying I don't know

what the Washington eagles nests look like. I'm trying to how it would have been something equivalent to the size of a bald eagle nest, which is a really big nest. Yes, okay, so let's keep going here. Um so, remember I talked about all those critics that that Audubon had, uh, this is this is something to substantiate that he was telling

the truth. There was for many many years he had not only in the birds that he drew or painted, but he would also paint the flora and the fauna that was around them that he had seen in the region or the area. Well, one of the things that he had in one of his drawings was the yellow water lily, which everybody said, that plant doesn't exist. Man, you need to take that out. You didn't discover that.

Cut it out. That's not real. And it wasn't until eighteen seventy six that that plant was quote unquote rediscovered in the everclades as being a real thick. So again he's he's getting criticized, and he doesn't back down because he saw it. And this is another example of oh well look you were actually right. But still I mean, they've never found any bones. They have not found any bones that we can attribute specifically to the Washington eagle

that we know. Um. Yeah. And and the thing is is people have said, well, maybe they they mixed in with the with the bald eagle population. Maybe they had they were able to cross breed. Um. One of the things though, that I find that makes that probably not plausible. Is one other physical description of the Washington eagle, which is, I believe you pronounced this the sare or the sear. I'm not sure which, but if you look at birds,

they have that kind of fleshy bit. Some birds have that fleshy bit at the top of their beak and it's kind of like the cuticle on your hand or on your fingernails. Well, the the Washington eagles were described, it doesn't The sair, the seer, whichever it is, doesn't match up to what is seen on bald eagles in

any stage of their development. So again that's one more thing that it's like, well, if he's done all these other things that have been found out to be real, I have a hard time saying that maybe that he made it up. Doesn't match up to other species, other birds, other birds have that kind of feature. Yes, I think if I remember right, the bald eagle, it's on its beak.

It's more of kind of a smooth strip of skin, kind of like what you see on like literally your cuticles, whereas if you look at some parrots, it's kind of a bulbous growth or um. What does it? Chickens have it on their their the wattles and stuff. It's it's kind of bulbous and fleshy. The way he described it, it was more of that bulbous growth rather than just flatien really close up, so maybe that it had an infection. Well, but he did see he did see them close up,

because he did. That's how he knew that they nested on the ground is that at one point he observed a mated pair with chicks. So he saw them from you know, not too far of a distance. So he didn't kill the last one. He well, I think he saw those ones. He came back with his rifle the next day the weather was so bad and they were gone, so eventually he had to get the one he got in Kentucky. So but we can say if they were real, if they were real, he probably didn't kill the last

one because there were chicks. Right. Good, Okay, we have our final theory, which is the thunderbird. Yep, exactly. I mean, hey, the thunderbird is considered a cryptid. But what the heck, let's let's talk about it, I mean, why not? Yeah? Okay, for those of you who don't know what the thunderbird is. According to the Internet, it is and I quote, a legendary creature. In certain North American indigenous people's history and culture. It is considered a supernatural being of power and strength.

It is especially important and frequently depicted in the art, songs, and oral histories of many Native American tribes from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast to the Great Lakes, in the Great Plates, so all over the continent, is what that's saying. End quote. Was somewhere in there, so in in In contemporary American accounts, the thunderbird is described as being more of a bat like or pterodactyl like creature.

But if we strip away that great late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds reporting that is out there, and instead we think about the Washington's eagle, this might be the answer. Because the thunderbird was rarely seen. It wasn't around all the time. It was really the big and it's scared the crap out of people when it showed up. Well, something big enough to carry you away probably, or it

looked like it could be big. I mean, you see something with a ten foot wingspan coming swooping down and you're in your canoe, I would be scared. Yeah, I would belief put a little lake water in the canoe. Definitely want to like at least grab the kids and you know, make sure they don't get carried away. Yeah, I mean, this is a kind of bird that in

prehistory would have been able to take away small children. Well, my understanding is, like, was it Australia, New Zealand They had an enormous eagle down there that was like a mix This thing look like a little runt. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. I can't remember what it was called, but it was freaking huge. Was this in recent history or in prehistory? Uh? Kind of prehistory? Because I've read a lot about different birds, so I can't keep them all straight now, Yeah, I know. But

and anyway, and you know, it's definitely would be frightening. Yeah. So so it's it's possible that these birds were what the native cultures referred to as the thunderbird, and indeed the species was already dwindling. And I like this because this links up an historical record of something and then the cultural record of something like that. Really enjoy that

you do find. Now here's the problem with the thunderbird, and and this always comes up when you look at something that is considered a cryptid is in contemporary today, you know, in the last fifty to a hundred years, in the descriptions of the thunderbird that you see, they feel outlandish to me because there's the whole pterodactyl angle. But then there's people who say, I saw this giant eagle show up and it flew away with a small deer in its talents, and when it was standing and looked,

it must have been ten ft tall. Okay, that to me sounds too fantastic. And these were always a very far flung rural places, you know, the middle of no where, Alaska or all of it? Did he mean all of it? In the middle of the you know, the Great Lakes regions and in Canada and stuff like that, like these these sparsely inhabited places. But like I saw this giant bird,

and did I know the birds in this area? But if we if we look at this and say, you know, when whenever Audubon was cataloging these was kind of the end of the accepted time when they existed, right, I think I'm willing to say probably this bird was ta end of the species exactly. They you know, that those hatchlings may have been the very last hatchlings ever. I you know, so that discards all of the crazy stuff that's really more contemporary of our time, and I kind

of buy it. I don't know, I mean, I like you like that, you know, full circle kind of. There are a lot of reports, not a lot, but there are. There's there's historic context for a large bird of the same description of the one that Audubon had. The only thing that I'll come back to, though, is the lack of any kind of fossil records or or you would, yeah,

the difficulty. I now, I am by no means an expert on this stuff, but the one thing that I do know about bird bones is that the majority of them tend to be hollow, so they don't preserve as well as a solid, dense bone of that you and I have, which I think probably impedes the ability to find them as readily. It's just like snakes sometimes are super hard to find because they're made of cartilage. Yeah,

readily being the operative operative word there. I mean, you would you would expect that if these things existed, somebody would have found one once, you know, But maybe they did and they just didn't know. Maybe maybe they did and they've named it something else and nobody has connected. I mean, I didn't, you know, the dot didn't get connected. I didn't look through and try and find these random bird skeletons. Just I don't know how to do that.

It might just be a fluke to that. The ones that have been found have been found by not by experts or people who were really looking for him. They just said it's a bird carcass, you know, and they just you know, walked on just some bird carcass because obviously it would be kind of scattered anyway, could by predators or scavengers, or they were mistaken for bald eagles. Yeah.

I mean that's the difficulties. You can't you can't get a sense as readily or as easily of the wingspan of a bird once it's dead and there's just a skeleton left because the feathers have gone. And that is one of the things that helps them achieve that giant wing. To me, it is that if they have feathers that are six inches long versus feathers that are I don't know, fifteen inches long, that adds a significant part, you know. I mean, that's for lofty power and flight. So it's

it's tough. Yeah, totally. Yea. Frankly, not everybody who sees a rotting bird carcass laying around, you know, it's going to pick it up and spread the wings out to check those check out the wingspans. And there's always that too. Yeah. Yeah, but I think rotbl Devin, I think were you talking more of like old bones than around, not a new carcass preserved bones, because I'm just assuming that, you know, later than nine, there haven't been these things. They haven't existed.

That's my assumption, at least probably not Joe, I mean, what's your thoughts on it, Joe. I still like the idea. I don't like the idea that they were real and they're extinct, like that they were real, not that they went extinct. Yeah, yeah, I like that they were real. That it's too bad they want extinct. It's a shame. But you know, seriously, I mean it makes sense that they were not a very adaptable species. They were kind

of on the brink anyway. And then people were moving into the Great Lakes area, which is apparently they're stomping grounds. People were flopping grounds. O good one yeah, so yeah, not at all outside the realm of possibility. I think that, I mean, there's there would have been, and by that time there's a significant amount of river traffic that's gonna I mean, you think about it. If they primarily hunt in the lakes and the rivers, in the in the streams,

that's going to cause a problem. So you can see how this could very easily be a small disruption that could echo through I'm in agreement. I think we're all in agreement here. I I would prefer to think that they were real and that they went extinct, or and that possibly they were in the historical record through Native

American culture. Although I still have a little niggling in the back of my brain because of the prank that Audubon pulled and and jerking uh Constantine's legs, So you know, that's it's like it's one thing to like, you know, destroy his credibility, but putting a little prank on him, destroying her own different things, putting them in your you know, I don't think did he put any of those ones

that he made it for Constantine? Did he put in any of his so like it's a step further than that, but it's also you know that's that's fifteen twenty years later. You know, you get desperate. People do funny things when they're desperate, speaking of things that were done out of desperation. And this is a terrible fact. So all of these plates that Audubon had for all of the birds that are in the book, after he passed away, he had

Alzheimer's and dimension. He passed away and his wife was desperate for money, and she started selling those plates for scrap metal just to get money. So I think, uh, it's in the low one hundreds of them still exists. The remainder of them. She needed money and so she old them and they were melted down. Yeah, it's one of those things in hitory like, oh well, plus those

the birds of American books. I mean, I'm sure a lot of those were cut up, just just a frame and hang on the walls some of those bays and stuff. So I mean that I don't want it. Maybe fifty exists still. I don't name the number, to be honest with you, jas high number. All I know is that when I went to the Rare book room and I asked about it, I was told that, oh yeah, you

can look at the books of the writings. But if you want to look at the actual book, you're gonna need to make an appointment, which means I would have to meet with somebody, probably get you know, go through a little lesson of what to do, and then put on the white gloves to even be allowed to touch it. And even then hopefully they would watch you like, oh, oh, yeah,

you know they believe me. The gal that Phoebe at the library, she was not but five or eight feet away the entire time that I was looking through the book I was reading. Yeah, they're are definitely valuable. So it's it's it's it's sad that those things are gone, Like it's sad, but you know, it's not at all unknown for people to cut pages out of books, especially like maps and plays and stuff like that. It's not

at all unknown. And sadly they weren't always framed. They have a lot of times we're just hung which makes them degrade even faster. But we are way off of that. I think we've finished up with the story here. We're just we're complaining about what a bunch of bad preservation as we all are. Instead, let's talk about the great things that I know everybody listens to this podcast for which is the things we talked about at the very yet.

Oh yeah, yeah, like our our website, because we have we have a website where we're gonna have the links to this story as well as every story that we've talked about before. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can find the show just about anywhere. So if you use iTunes, you can subscribe and review and leave a rating. If you're using any of the other streaming platforms, whether that be Stitcher or Google Play or any of the other various ones that are out there, do subscribe

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actually go in and have discussions about episodes with other listeners. Last, we have merchandise, or next, I should say, we have merchandise that is also on the website, so shirts, stickers, mugs, all those good things. There's links for those in the right hand panel. And the last thing that I was going to talk about is emails. So you're able to send us an email if you have a story suggestion, you have a question, you want to talk about an episode,

whatever the case may be. That email address is thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. So yes, that's a message fan mail. We like fan mail, especially me. But yeah, I totally thought he was gonna say feather mail and you I was really expecting another bird pun in there. Okay, well that is all that I have so far and for this episode, So I guess if that's all we've got, the birds of a feather doesn't work in this one. We will talk to you guys next week. Tend to

fly on out of here. No bird pounds for me, Bye, everybody, Caca, caca, What is about the Western Steve