Labrador Duck

 

 

Medium : Gouache and cut paper on illustration board

Image Size : 14.5” x 19”

Circa : 1957

The fate of the Labrador Duck is obscure, but it was undoubtedly hastened by egg collectors and by wholesale slaughter for the retail market. During the breeding and moulting season, when he lost the power of flight, his flocks were helpless-sitting ducks for the hunting ships sent north by the feather merchants. The last survivor was shot on Long Island eighty-two years ago, but he is memorialized by forty-four stuffed specimens in museums and by countless antique featherbeds.

-Charley Harper

Ford Times, America’s Vanishing Birds, November 1957; Birds and Words, 1974