Pestvogel

Since the 16th-centuy, the migratory Eurasian songbird known as the Bohemian Waxwing has been erroneously branded a harbinger of death and disease for its habit of appearing suddenly in large numbers to feed on ripened fruit. This sinister association is revealed in the waxwing’s common names, which include “Pestvogel” a Dutch word meaning “plague bird” and “Unglückvogel” a German word meaning “disaster bird.” Emulating the illustration style of famed American naturalist John James Audubon, Walton Ford’s Pestvogel mocks this age-old superstition by presenting a group of waxwings perched on a coil of barbed wire, eagerly gorging on ripened blackberries, oblivious to the active battlefield nearby. Ford’s dramatic scene is an oblique reference to the widely reported waxwing invasion in Great Britain during the winter of 1913-14, an event seen by some as foreshadowing the onset of World War I the following summer.