On the evening of June 23, 1833, John James Audubon met and had the chance to visit with Innu hunters who camped each summer near Labrador’s American Harbor to hunt for seals. Audubon was invited into a shelter having a “cheerful fire, the smoke of which escaped through a summit of the apartment, and over the fire two kettles boiled.” The Innu hunters described to Audubon the difficult challenges posed by French fur traders before the French and Indian War followed by the control of trade by the English and the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Fur animals are scarce, yet some few Beavers and Otters are caught, a few Martens and Sables, and some Foxes and Lynx, but every year diminishes their numbers. The Fur Company [The Hudson’s Bay Company] may be called the exterminating medium of these wild and almost uninhabitable climes, where cupidity and the love of gold can alone induce man to reside for a while.” It is questions like the one that Audubon next posed that placed him in the forefront of conservation in North America, “Where can I go now, and visit nature undisturbed?”
The tragic irony for Audubon was that he could not appreciate nature undisturbed without a shotgun. On June 27, near the mouth of the Natashquan River, Audubon and his fellow explorers found themselves swatting through yet another maelstrom of mosquitoes and black flies only to begin hearing yet another unfamiliar bird song, “louder, stronger, and far more melodious than that of the Canary bird… So strange, so beautiful was that song that I pronounced the musician, ere it was shot, a new species of Warbler.” Audubon’s son, John Woodhouse, fired the shot that brought down the musician. Audubon readily identified the bird as the Ruby-crowned wren. The Ruby-crowned wren is known today as the Ruby-crowned kinglet. The Ruby-crowned kinglet is far less vocal in the fall and winter in the southern part of its range and where Audubon would have become familiar with the bird. The calls of the Ruby-crowned kinglet during the fall and winter are no more melodious than a few quick, light taps on a typewriter.