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11J.J Audubon’s drawing of Ruffed Grouse. Courtesy of the National Audubon Society“Mill Grove was ever to me a blessed spot,”Audubon wrote years later. And no wonder.Ruffed grouse were common in the coniferthickets, flocks of ducks filled the air,woodcock did their skydances along the edgesof meadows, and songbirds swarmed the treesin spring.Audubon only lived along the Schuylkill forfour years before moving to Kentucky, butthey were crucial ones for his development asan artist and ornithologist. It was here thathe struck upon his great inspiration – to pina freshly shot specimen into a lifelike poseusing a wooden framework and an armatureof slender wires, then to paint it lifesizeon watercolor paper. Compared with thestiff illustrations of Wilson and other earlynaturalists, Audubon’s work was a riot of lifeand movement. Art and nature have neverbeen the same.John James AudubonAudubon worked in his own little bubble,never meeting Bartram, and not encounteringWilson until years later in Louisville,Kentucky, a chance meeting that probablysparked Audubon’s own interest in creatinghis great Birds of America folios. Once thatspark was struck, though, he kept returningto eastern Pennsylvania for inspiration andspecimens.In 1829, for instance, he embarked on a sixweekexpedition up the Lehigh River to its