Although Robert Rauschenberg was inspired by discarded boxes (including one for frozen turkeys) that he found in an alley near the Gemini G.E.L. printshop in Los Angeles, he did not use the actual boxes. Instead, he painstakingly re-created the labels, tears, and creases in the original boxes as screenprints and applied them to fresh cardboard. The illusion created by Rauschenberg is so successful that it is only under careful examination that it becomes apparent this work is a reproduction of mass-produced packaging materials. Cardbird V is one from a series of seven cardboard collages of birds.