On August 6, 1833, the son of John James Audubon, John Woodhouse, and his fellow explorers, Thomas Lincoln and Joseph Coolidge, took out from the Ripley and rowed to the far north end of Labrador’s Brador Bay and then continued further north along the Brador River until they were having to do too much paddling up a fast-flowing river. Audubon, Lincoln, and Coolidge hiked further upstream to where the river turned into crushing rapids and white water with high rocky banks. Then out of the steep drop-offs and “stupendous rocks” came a “loud and piercing shriek.” John Woodhouse raised his shotgun, fired, and brought down the bird that was the source of the loud and piercing shriek. Its mate then made the mistake of coming into view and was also felled. John Woodhouse, Lincoln, and Coolidge collected the specimens and then began a search to make sure there was not a nest the birds were trying to protect. They climbed 100 ft. up one of the stupendous rocks to peer down and spotted about 50 ft. above the river a nest on a ledge “composed of sticks, sea-weeds, and mosses, about two feet in diameter, and almost flat.” Woodhouse, Lincoln, and Coolidge then worked their way to the spot on the ground below the nest to examine and note piling up the remains of guillemots, puffins, and grouse.
When the specimens were presented to John James Audubon, he declared that a new species had been discovered for science. Audubon went to work on an outline of the bird that occupied him well into the night. “The next day it rained for hours, and the water fell on my paper and colours all the while from the rigging of the Ripley.” When Audubon was finally able to finish the drawing for Birds of America, he titled the bird a Labrador Falcon.
The new species lasted only until the later octavo edition of Birds of America was published and Audubon was able to re-identify the Labrador Falcon as a dark version or morph of what many referred to as a Duck Hawk. What the Sparrow Hawk did to sparrows and the Fish Hawk to fish, the Duck Hawk did to ducks and just about any other bird they decided to make their prey. In Fauna Boreali-Americana, the Duck hawk was called a Jer Falcon. When Audubon was shown mature versions of the Jer Falcon, he used the specimens for his drawing in the octavo edition and titled the bird an Iceland or Gyr falcon. The current common name for the bird is the Gyrfalcon which stems from the Old High German giri for “greedy” and valke for “falcon.” The Gyrfalcon stays even farther to the north today to maintain its greedy ways of going after ducks, guillemots, puffins, and grouse. If a Gyrfalcon is reported on Cornell’s e-Bird system in North America, the location is listed as “sensitive.”