Audubon's Birds of America: all 435 plates, with today's bird names

An original print, or a reproduction?

An original plate from this edition was printed between 1827 and 1838 on a sheet about 26 by 38 inches, and colored by hand. Smaller octavo prints from the 1840s and the many modern reproductions are different things, and priced very differently. Before you buy, read how to tell an original Audubon print from a reproduction. For the wall, see how to frame a classic bird print, and for the man himself, our guide to John James Audubon.

Where to see them free: Audubon.org has a page for every plate (linked in the table below), and the University of Pittsburgh shows its own complete set online. Both allow non-commercial, educational use of their images.

Famous plates, and the stories behind them

Fourteen of the best-known plates. The stories come from Audubon’s own Ornithological Biography, the five volumes of text he wrote to go with the plates.

1. 

   Plate 1 Great American Cock (Wild Turkey)

   Today: Wild Turkey

   The book opens with its grandest bird. Audubon admired the Wild Turkey for its size and beauty, and noted that it was “the origin of the domestic race,” the farmyard turkey. He found it most plentiful in the woods of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, and along the Mississippi and Missouri.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831), read October 2, 2026. See plate 1 at Audubon.org

2. Plate 26 Carolina Parrot

   Today: Carolina Parakeet (extinct)

   Audubon painted seven parakeets on one plant, and told readers that he “spared not my labour.” The plant is cocklebur: he describes how each bird plucks a bur, turns it in one foot, cracks it open and lets the shell drop. The Carolina Parakeet is extinct today.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831); AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025b (AviList Core Team, CC BY 4.0), read October 2, 2026. See plate 26 at Audubon.org

3. Plate 62 Passenger Pigeon

   Today: Passenger Pigeon (extinct)

   In the fall of 1813, riding from his home in Henderson, Kentucky, toward Louisville, Audubon tried to count the passing flocks of pigeons. He gave up after 163 marks in 21 minutes. The birds, he wrote, hid the light of noon “as by an eclipse.” The Passenger Pigeon is extinct today.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831); AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025b (AviList Core Team, CC BY 4.0), read October 2, 2026. See plate 62 at Audubon.org

4. 

   Plate 66 Ivory-billed Woodpecker

   Today: Ivory-billed Woodpecker

   The bold black and white of this woodpecker, with the male’s red crest, reminded Audubon of the paintings of Van Dyck. Whenever one flew from tree to tree, he would think, “There goes a Vandyke!” He compared its call to “the false high note of a clarionet.”

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831), read October 2, 2026. See plate 66 at Audubon.org

5. Plate 81 Fish Hawk

   Today: Osprey

   Audubon thought “Fish Hawk” too plain a name for such a strong and skillful hunter. Were he not “a member of a republic,” he wrote, he might have called it the “Imperial Fisher.” Today we call it the Osprey.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831), read October 2, 2026. See plate 81 at Audubon.org

6. Plate 102 Blue Jay

   Today: Blue Jay

   Three Blue Jays, each enjoying a stolen egg. Audubon calls them “rogues” and thieves, and notes that a jay copies the cry of a small hawk so well that little birds rush for cover.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 2 (1834), read October 2, 2026. See plate 102 at Audubon.org

7. Plate 121 Snowy Owl

   Today: Snowy Owl

   Audubon knew the Snowy Owl as a winter visitor, seldom seen before November and gone by early February, and most common in Massachusetts and Maine. He wrote that it hunts by day as well as at dusk, and even catches fish at shallow rapids.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 2 (1834), read October 2, 2026. See plate 121 at Audubon.org

8. 

   Plate 211 Great blue Heron

   Today: Great Blue Heron

   Audubon asks you to stand with him on the bank of the Ohio and watch a heron hunt. It waits so still that you might take it for “the statue of a bird,” until it strikes and spears a perch.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835), read October 2, 2026. See plate 211 at Audubon.org

9. 

   Plate 226 Hooping Crane

   Today: Whooping Crane

   In March 1810, near Louisville, Kentucky, Audubon showed the ornithologist Alexander Wilson a flock of cranes, and told him “the white birds were the adults, and that the grey ones were the young.” The gray cranes were in fact another species, the Sandhill Crane, which is what his plate 261, also titled “Hooping Crane,” shows.

   Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835), read October 2, 2026. See plate 226 at Audubon.org

10. 

    Plate 311 American White Pelican

    Today: American White Pelican

    Audubon was sure that America’s white pelican was not the same bird as Europe’s, and named it for “my beloved country.” As a young man in Kentucky he had seen them in great numbers on the sandbars of the Ohio. Today it is the American White Pelican, a species of its own.

    Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 4 (1838), read October 2, 2026. See plate 311 at Audubon.org

11. Plate 321 Roseate Spoonbill

    Today: Roseate Spoonbill

    Audubon found Roseate Spoonbills nesting in flocks on the Florida Keys, and even more of them around Galveston Bay in Texas. He noticed how they feel the cold: the ones that wintered near Cape Sable rarely moved north toward St. Augustine before March.

    Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 4 (1838), read October 2, 2026. See plate 321 at Audubon.org

12. Plate 341 Great Auk

    Today: Great Auk (extinct)

    Audubon’s only trustworthy report of a Great Auk off the American coast came from Henry Havell, his engraver’s brother, who hooked one on the banks of Newfoundland. On deck it walked clumsily, bit everyone in reach and refused all food, and after several days it was set free. The Great Auk is extinct today.

    Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 4 (1838); AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025b (AviList Core Team, CC BY 4.0), read October 2, 2026. See plate 341 at Audubon.org

13. 

    Plate 376 Trumpeter Swan

    Today: Trumpeter Swan

    Audubon drew this young swan in New Orleans, where Trumpeter Swans were sold in the markets; the bird was shot nearby on December 16, 1822. He used Trumpeter Swan quills as pens to draw the feet and claws of small birds, and said the best steel pen of his day “might have blushed” beside them.

    Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 4 (1838), read October 2, 2026. See plate 376 at Audubon.org

14. Plate 431 American Flamingo

    Today: American Flamingo

    On May 7, 1832, sailing from Indian Key in the Florida Keys, Audubon saw his first flock of flamingos, the birds he had made the trip largely to study. To fit the tall bird on the sheet at life size, he painted its long neck curving down to the ground.

    Source: Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 5 (1839); Reimagining the American Flamingo (Audubon magazine, Summer 2017), read October 2, 2026. See plate 431 at Audubon.org

All 435 plates

The plates in order, with Audubon’s own name for each bird as printed, today’s name, and a link to a free scan. Together they show 445 species we can name today. Jump to plates:

• 1–50
• 51–100
• 101–150
• 151–200
• 201–250
• 251–300
• 301–350
• 351–400
• 401–435

How we matched today’s names

Bird names have changed a lot since the 1830s. Audubon’s “Fish Hawk” is today’s Osprey, and a few of his birds were young or female plumages he took for separate species. We matched each plate using library and museum catalogues, checked every name against AviList, the shared world list of bird species (version 2025b, with its North American English names), and checked that each plate’s page on Audubon.org shows that plate. “Extinct” and “possibly extinct” follow the conservation status AviList records. Where nobody has been able to match Audubon’s bird to a known species, we say “identity uncertain” rather than guess: that’s 6 plates. When names change again, our bird name changes page has every change since 2018.

Species names: AviList Core Team, AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025b, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Your own birds, beside the classic paintings

A Birdfolio is a hardcover book of every bird you’ve seen, each beside a classic painting, many of them Audubon’s. See every bird you’ve seen beside a classic painting: it’s free to try.