Wilson errs, if at all, in the other direction. His birds, on the other hand, reflect his cautious, undemonstrative Scotch nature. Few of them are shown in violent action like Audubon's cuckoo; their poses for the most part are easy and characteristic. His drawings do not show the mastery of the subject and the versatility that Audubon's do;--they have not the artistic excellence, but they less frequently do violence to the bird's character by exaggerated activity.
The colouring in Audubon's birds is also often exaggerated. His purple finch is as brilliant as a rose, whereas at its best, this bird is a dull carmine.
Either the Baltimore oriole has changed its habits of nest-building since Audubon's day, or else he was wrong in his drawing of the nest of that bird, in making the opening on the side near the top. I have never seen an oriole's nest that was not open at the top.
In his drawings of a group of robins, one misses some of the most characteristic poses of that bird, while some of the attitudes that are portrayed are not common and familiar ones.
But in the face of all that he accomplished, and against such odds, and taking into consideration also the changes that may have crept in through engraver and colourists, it ill becomes us to indulge in captious criticisms. Let us rather repeat Audubon's own remark on realising how far short his drawings came of representing the birds themselves: "After all, there's nothing perfect but _primitiveness_."
Finding that he could not live in the city, in 1842 Audubon removed with his family to "Minnie's Land," on the banks of the Hudson, now known as Audubon Park, and included in the city limits; this became his final home.
In the spring of 1843 he started on his last long journey, his trip to the Yellow-stone River, of which we have a minute account in his "Missouri River Journals"--documents that lay hidden in the back of an old secretary from 1843 to the time when they were found by his grand-daughters in 1896, and published by them in 1897.
This trip was undertaken mainly in the interests of the "Quadrupeds and Biography of American Quadrupeds," and much of what he saw and did is woven into those three volumes. The trip lasted eight months, and the hardships and exposures seriously affected Audubon's health. He returned home in October, 1843.