Dead Birds

Noel Grunwaldt
"Untitled (Hawk #3)"
2008
Watercolor and graphite on Strathmore illustration board
40 × 30 inches

"Birds still alive with their wings compound-fractured, bone sticking out, the angles gruesome. A confiscated mesh laundry bag stuffed with falcons and owls, many dead, many not, all mashed together like dirty underwear...A pile of forty-seven dead hawks and eagles, each one decapitated by poachers to keep it from biting, all of them confiscated in one morning. A smaller pile of bloody heads found scattered on the ground the same morning."

-Jonathan Franzen, "The Way of the Puffin," The New Yorker, April 21, 2008