Northern Mockingbird painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

About this painting

This mockingbird is by John Gerrard Keulemans, from Onze Vogels in Huis en Tuin (“Our Birds in House and Garden,” 1869–76). More about Keulemans in our guide to the painters behind a Birdfolio.

Audubon’s Northern Mockingbird: plate 21, “The Mocking Bird”

Audubon's plate 21 shows two pairs of mockingbirds in a Carolina jessamine. He wrote that when a snake climbed to a nest for the eggs or young, the owners and many neighboring mockingbirds flew at it, sometimes driving it off or killing it.

Throughout Louisiana, he said, people would not willingly let one be shot, and children seldom robbed the nests. In winter the birds kept close to gardens and farm buildings, perching on roofs and chimney tops. He called it “this king of song, who has derived all from Nature's self.”

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831). See plate 21 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

• John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 138: “Common Mocking Bird”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
• Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 101: “Mocking Bird”, with Gray Catbird and Brown Thrasher. Free scan (Internet Archive)

About the Northern Mockingbird

• Northern Mockingbirds often catch insects while walking or running on the ground. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild Northern Mockingbird lived at least 14 years and 10 months: it was banded in Texas in 1986 and found there again in 2000. 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 21 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.