John James Audubon sailed from Portsmouth, England, aboard the Columbia on April 1, 1829, and arrived in New York City on May 10. Maintaining the speediest and surest correspondence with his publisher, Robert Havell Jr., in London required that Audubon stay in close proximity of New York City and extend that much longer being apart from his wife, Lucy. Also tying Audubon down in New York City was the opportunity to exhibit the drawings for Birds of America for the first time in the United States. The showing took place at the Lyceum of Natural History that Samuel Latham Mitchell (1764-1831) founded in 1817. The lyceum was renamed the New York Academy of Sciences in 1876.
As necessary as it was for Audubon to be in New York City, it was even more imperative that Audubon find and collect specimens to complete the drawings for Birds of America. Audubon compromised by traveling just south of New York City to visit and explore the shores of New Jersey. Among the many birds that Audubon documented and drew in New Jersey during the summer of 1829 was the Worm-eating warbler.
Audubon encountered the Worm-eating warbler in many places but not like he did “in the Jerseys.” Audubon drew the bird perching on the limbs of Pokeberry, a plant that most gardeners and landscapers would regard today as a highly aggressive weed. And while Worm-eating warblers might find their way onto a Pokeberry plant, they much prefer to be high up in the stands of pine forests that once covered places like New Jersey searching for food. French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-1788) was the first to name the bird for science. He called the bird in the book he titled Histoire Naturelle a “Mangeur de Vers.” The French word for “worm” is “ver.” But there are many other insects that have “ver” in their names, such as firefly or lightning bug (ver luisant) and silkworm (ver à sol). It is actually the bugs that exist high up in trees that the Worm-eating warbler likes devouring, not the bugs living underground.