In “Spotted Towhee” artist Phyllis Shafer depicts a widespread bird of the West in a rapidly changing landscape.
Category Archives: Audubon Magazine
Audubon: A Celebration of the Bobolink’s Star-Guided Migration
After college, Kirsten Furlong developed a deep interest in birds while working in a wildlife photographer’s gallery. The Boise, Idaho, resident’s current obsession is the Bobolink, a songbird whose numbers have plummeted in step with the loss of prairie nesting habitat.
To reach these breeding grounds, the birds use the stars to help navigate more than 6,000 miles. “It’s pretty magical,” Furlong says of the feat. Here she depicts two Bobolinks against a star-spangled backdrop. The ink and acrylic drawing is heavy on intricate detail but light on color, with pops of yellow at the birds’ napes and green grass blades that serve as fragile perches or lifelines.
Audubon: A Sculpture That Captures the Dry Reality for Black-necked Stilts
Artist Sarah Conti situates life-size versions of the shorebirds in a disappearing habitat.
Audubon: An Abundance of American Robins
Stuck inside her Brooklyn apartment in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Mayuko Fujino had one connection to the outside world: a single window that looked out on a neighbor’s yard. It was March, then April, and Fujino thought it was about time to see an American Robin. She spotted sparrows, pigeons, cardinals—but none of the robins that usually appear in spring.
Audubon: The Western Tanager of Tomorrow
This oil on panel painting of a Western Tanager crossing a rocky desert expanse began as a little bit of clay. Artist George Boorujy created this piece as part of series in which he puts himself in the position of future humans and imagines rituals they might enact in a climate-devastated world. He sculpts objects that could be part of these rites of survival and passage, then paints them into apocalyptic landscapes.
Jessica S. McKenzie 