Classic bird paintings

American Kestrel painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

John James Audubon painted the American Kestrel as plate 142 of The Birds of America (1827–38), under the name American Sparrow Hawk. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. The pair shown here was painted by Louis Agassiz Fuertes for a New York State Museum report of 1912.

Updated

A male American Kestrel with blue-gray wings and a rust-brown female holding a grasshopper, perched on a pale branch
American Kestrels, male and female, signed by Fuertes, from a New York State Museum report. Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Annual Report of the New York State Museum (1912)

About this painting

This male and rust-backed female, the female holding a grasshopper, were painted and signed by Louis Agassiz Fuertes and printed in an Annual Report of the New York State Museum (1912). In Fuertes's plates for Birds of New York (1910–14), the kestrel is plate 52, still called the Sparrow Hawk. More in our guide to Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

Audubon’s American Kestrel: plate 142, “American Sparrow Hawk”

Audubon set his male and female on a branch of butternut, or white walnut. He described its hunting posts on fence stakes, grain stacks, broken treetops and barn corners, and how it pounces from them.

He once found a young male that had fallen from its nest, took it home and named it Nero. Nero lived free around the house, slept behind a window shutter, and liked to land on a tame duck's back and ride along while she waddled off quacking. On a trip down the Mississippi he often saw these little hawks on low dead branches over the water, picking up beetles that had fallen in.

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 2 (1834). See plate 142 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

  • John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 22: “Sparrow Hawk”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 52: “Sparrow Hawk”, with the Merlin. Free scan (Internet Archive)

About the American Kestrel

  • Where it has no good perch, an American Kestrel may hover over a field to look for prey. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild American Kestrel lived at least 14 years and 8 months: it was banded in Utah in 1987 and found there again in 2001. That is a record from bird banding, not a typical lifespan. (Source: USGS Bird Banding Laboratory, 2025 longevity table.) How long do wild birds live?

Buying a print?

An original plate 142 is a hand-colored sheet about 26 by 38 inches, printed in Britain in 1827–38; many prints sold today are reproductions or small 1840s octavo prints. How to tell an original from a reproduction.

In a Birdfolio, the hardcover book of your own life list, this painting sits beside the American Kestrel with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.