On this day, March 20, we find John James Audubon not in the quiet woods, but in a state of restless, frustrated anticipation. While we celebrate the Spring Equinox as a time of rebirth, for Audubon in 1843, it was a battle against the elements in St. Louis, Missouri.
Audubon was preparing for what would be his final great adventure: the Missouri River Expedition. He was 57 years old, his eyesight was beginning to fail, and he was anxious to document the mammals of the West for his upcoming work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.
The “Rat-Trap” of St. Louis
While the official start of spring should have brought bird song and blooming flora, the journals of March 20, 1843, tell a different story. Audubon was stuck in a “filthy” hotel he unceremoniously dubbed a “rat-trap.” *
- The Weather: A late-season cold snap had seized the city. The Missouri River was choked with “crashing hard ice,” making it impossible for his steamboat, the Magnet, to begin the journey up-river.
- The Preparation: Rather than moping, Audubon spent the day organizing his “vials and spirits”—the chemicals needed to preserve the specimens he expected to find in the wilder lands to the West.
- The Observation: Even in a dreary hotel, he noted the arrival of the first spring migrants struggling against the wind, proving that the “Equinox” was a biological reality even when the weather refused to cooperate.
A Look Back: March 20, 1833
Exactly ten years earlier, Audubon was in a similarly frantic state having spent time in Philadelphia and New York. He was coordinating the Labrador Expedition, a journey to find the northern water birds that had eluded him in the South.
On this day in 1833, he was obsessing over the details of his famous Golden Eagle painting (Plate 181). He famously spent the third week of March studying the muscularity of a golden eagle specimen to ensure that his depiction captured the “fierce energy” of the species as it returned to its northern hunting grounds.
Why the Equinox Matters
For Audubon, March 20 was a benchmark. It was the day he looked for the Eastern Phoebe—the very first bird species he had successfully “banded” with silver thread as a young man in Pennsylvania. To Audubon, the Equinox wasn’t just a date on a calendar; it was a deadline set by nature. If the birds were moving, he had to be moving, too.
“The ice may stay the steamer, but it cannot stay the wing of the Phoebe.” — Reflections on the Spring of 1843.