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 many today would consider more so an obnoxious weed than a lovely, purple-berried perennial herb. Although most of the Worm-eating warblers that Audubon watched were likely higher up in the stands of pine forests and other trees that once covered New Jersey looking for food. The bird got its name from French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-1788) calling the bird a “Mangeur de Vers” or “Devourer of Worms” in Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804). “Ver” is indeed the French word for worm, but in the case of the Worm-eating warbler, it would be more like the consumption of a silkworm than an earthworm.