Plate 72 Swallow-tailed Hawk 

This is John James Audubon’s rendering of the Swallow-tailed Hawk, likely created sometime between 1827 and 1838, as part of his ambitious series "Birds of America." The pursuit of depicting American birds was intertwined with the project of defining American identity itself. Audubon sought to capture the essence of untamed wilderness, a landscape he believed was rapidly disappearing. Yet, his vision was rooted in a complicated perspective. As an artist, he was driven by scientific curiosity and a romantic ideal of nature. But as a man of his time, he participated in the colonial attitudes towards land and wildlife. The hawk here is both a symbol of freedom and a specimen of study. Strangling a snake, we witness a drama of survival. But it’s a scene staged for our observation, reflecting our own complex relationship with the natural world, where beauty and conquest often intertwine.