Classic bird paintings
Mourning Dove painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Mourning Dove as plate 17 of The Birds of America (1827–38), under the name Carolina Pigeon, or Turtle Dove. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. Shown here is plate 286 of his smaller octavo edition (1840–44), where it is the Carolina Turtle Dove.
Updated
About this painting
The picture here is plate 286 of the octavo edition, published from 1840 to 1844 in a book-size format, where the bird is the Carolina Turtle Dove. It keeps the two pairs and the flowering stuartia of the big plate.
Audubon’s Mourning Dove: plate 17, “Carolina Pigeon, or Turtle Dove”
Audubon's plate shows two pairs on a flowering white stuartia. Below, the female sits on her eggs and takes food from her mate's bill; above, a courting female has walked to the tip of the branch, about to fly off. He called them “two as gentle pairs of Turtles as ever cooed their loves in the green woods.”
In spring he watched the male rise as if to climb high, then sail down in a wide circle, wings and tail spread, to land near the sitting female. He found it nesting in every part of the country he visited: in Louisiana from early April, raising two broods, but in Connecticut seldom before the middle of May, with one.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831). See plate 17 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 286: “Carolina Turtle Dove” (the painting shown above). Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 42: “Mourning Dove”, with the Passenger Pigeon. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Mourning Dove
- A Mourning Dove fills its crop with seeds quickly, then digests them while it rests. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Mourning Dove lived at least 30 years and 4 months: it was banded in Georgia in 1968 and found in Florida in 1998. 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 17 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 Mourning Dove with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.