Whose attraction to birds began early. The writings were discovered in an old calfskin-bound volume, and published over 40 years after his death by his granddaughter in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, March, 1893."One incident (...) is as perfect in my memory as if it had occurred this very day (...). My mother had several beautiful parrots and some monkeys; one of the latter was a full-grown male of a very large species. One morning, while the servants were engaged in arranging the room I was in, "Pretty Polly" asking for her breakfast as usual , "Du pain au lait pour le perroquet Mignonne", the man of the woods probably thought the bird presuming upon his rights in the scale of nature; be this as it may, he certainly showed his supremacy in strength over the denizen of the air, for, walking deliberately and uprightly towards the poor bird, he at once killed it, with unnatural composure. The sensation of my infant heart at this cruel sight were agony to me. I prayed the servant to beat the monkey, but he, who for some reason preferred the monkey to the parrot, refused. Iuttered long and piercing cries, my mother rushed into the room, I was tranquillized, the monkey was forever afterward chained, and Mignonne buried with all the pomp of a cherished lost one."
From AUDUBON'S STORY OF HIS YOUTH by James Audubon (1785-1851),

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"One incident (...) is as perfect in my memory as if it had occurred this very day (...). My mother had several beautiful parrots and some monkeys; one of the latter was a full-grown male of a very large species. One morning, while the servants were engaged in arranging the room I was in, "Pretty Polly" asking for her breakfast as usual, "Du pain au lait pour le perroquet Mignonne," the man of the woods probably thought the bird presuming upon his rights in the scale of nature; be this as it may, he certainly showed his supremacy in strength over the denizen of the air, for, walking deliberately and uprightly towards the poor bird, he at once killed it, with unnatural composure. The sensation of my infant heart at this cruel sight were agony to me. I prayed the servant to beat the monkey, but he, who for some reason preferred the monkey to the parrot, refused. I uttered long and piercing cries, my mother rushed into the room, I was tranquilized, the monkey was forever afterward chained, and Mignonne buried with all the pomp of a cherished lost one."
From AUDUBON'S STORY OF HIS YOUTH by James Audubon (1785-1851), whose attraction to birds began early. The writings were discovered in an old calfskin-bound volume, and published over 40 years after his death by his granddaughter in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, March, 1893.

In conversation with Dodie Kazanjian in "Tigers of Wrath, Horses of Instruction," 2002:
DK: I want to turn to bird pictures. Is there any one in particular that stands out for you?
WF: "Sensations of an Infant Heart" is about Audubon's earliest memory. His mother kept a menagerie in their house, and she had a monkey that strangled Audubon's favorite parrot when Audubon was a tiny child. He said there wasn't a day that went by he didn't think of that. He went hysterical when it happened, because he loved the parrot, and that gave rise to his love for birds. But later, he's like the monkey, a killer of birds himself. He never painted an image of this, so I just had to.
DK: The monkey's looking at us.
WF: He's got that weird, calm demeanor that animals have when they kill other animals, like cats with mice, where they have a careless look on their faces. It's one of the things that disturbs us when we watch animals eating each other-- how they do it, without any emotion.