Plate 255
Havell CCXXXIV
Ring-Necked Duck
(Aythya collaris)
Audubon found this to be one of the tastiest of the wild ducks and also one of the greediest: "A male which I shot near Louisville," he wrote, "... exhibited a protuberance of the neck so very remarkable as to induce me to cut the skin, when I found a frog, the body of which was nearly two inches long, and which had almost choked the bird, as it allowed me to go up within a dozen or fifteen paces before I took aim." On November 27, 1821, in New Orleans, Audubon noted in his journal that he was drawing this pair. The female, at left, is done almost entirely in pastel, Audubon's preferred medium at the time; the male is in pastel and water color. Shortly before the work was published in 1834, Audubon painted the habitat in oil.
Source: The Original Water-Color Paintings by John James Audubon. Copyright 1966 by American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.
Learn more about this print on the National Audubon Society's website.