Osprey painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

About this painting

This is volume 1, plate 5 of John Gould's The Birds of Great Britain (1862–73). It is lettered “J. Wolf & H. C. Richter del. et lith.”: Joseph Wolf and Henry Constantine Richter drew it and put it on the lithographic stone. Gould ran a workshop of artists; our guide to John Gould tells who drew what.

Audubon’s Osprey: plate 81, “Fish Hawk”

Audubon thought “Fish Hawk” too plain a name: were he not a citizen of a republic, he wrote, he might call it the Imperial Fisher. His plate shows a male holding its fish the way he saw it carried up from the water. He never saw one chase another bird, and he found Fish Crows and grackles raising families among the outer sticks of its huge nest.

Fishermen, he said, welcomed the Fish Hawk each spring as the sign that the fish were coming, and believed its nest kept other hawks away from their chickens. He thought the belief was wrong but useful, because it protected the bird. When he first moved to Louisville, Kentucky, several pairs nested across the river in Indiana, opposite the foot of the Falls of the Ohio.

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831). See plate 81 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

• John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 15: “Common Osprey, Fish Hawk”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
• John Gould’s The Birds of Europe (1832–37), plate 12: “Osprey” (Pandion haliaeetus). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)
• Joseph Wolf and Henry Constantine Richter, for John Gould’s The Birds of Great Britain (1862–73), vol. 1, plate 5: “Osprey” (Pandion haliaëtus) (the painting shown above). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)

About the Osprey

• An Osprey plunges feet first into the water to catch fish in its talons. (Source: National Audubon Society)
• Ospreys were once grouped with the other hawks, but now have a family of their own. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild Osprey lived at least 25 years and 2 months: it was banded in Virginia in 1973 and found there again 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 81 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.