Plate 70 – Henslow’s Bunting

In the spring of 1820, John James Audubon was working for the Western Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio. While he and the curator for the museum, Robert Best, were hunting and exploring the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, they started to detect soft chipping sounds and movement through the tall grass areas. Specimens of a small brown bird were collected and found to be a new species for science. When Audubon drew the bird for Birds of America, he named the bird after John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), a professor of botany at the University of Cambridge: “a gentleman so well known to the scientific world, my object has been to manifest my gratitude for the many kind attentions which he has shewn towards me.” Among the students that Henslow taught and tutored at the University of Cambridge was Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Henslow’s bunting is known today as the Henslow’s sparrow. Audubon went on to see and hear the Henslow’s sparrow in such places as the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida during the winter and from Maryland to New York during the nesting season to consider the Henslow’s sparrow as “abundant.” Abundant today would be no more than one hundred or so. The most anyone has reported on Cornell’s e-Bird system is 126. Evan Speck counted the birds on April 13, 2014, where grass is allowed to grow tall at a mining site in Warrick County, Indiana (see eBird Checklist S17868760).