Classic bird paintings
Pileated Woodpecker painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Pileated Woodpecker as plate 111 of The Birds of America (1827–38), two adults and two young males on a grapevine, under the same name. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org; the picture here is the book-size octavo version (1840–44), plate 257.
Updated
About this painting
The picture is the octavo edition’s plate 257, from the 1840s: all four woodpeckers of the big plate, on the same grapevine, reduced to book size.
Audubon’s Pileated Woodpecker: plate 111, “Pileated Woodpecker”
Plate 111 shows a male, a female and two young males on a raccoon grape vine; Audubon added the young birds to show their longer, pointed bills. Country people called it Woodcock or Logcock, and he wrote that the rolling sound of its hammering could be heard a quarter of a mile away. Even in his day it was scarce and shy in settled districts.
In Louisiana he several times crept up to one feeding on a low rotten stump and struck the stump with his cap; the bird dropped to the ground as if dead, then came to and flew off. On Galveston Island, Texas, he once saw one tapping on the roof of a house, the only time he had seen one so tame.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vols. 2 (1834) and 5 (1839). See plate 111 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 257: “Pileated Woodpecker” (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 63: “Northern Pileated Woodpecker”. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Pileated Woodpecker
- Pileated Woodpeckers dig into dead wood for insects, sometimes breaking rotten stumps apart. (Source: National Audubon Society)
- They grew scarce as eastern forests were cleared, then began to increase again around the start of the 20th century. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Pileated Woodpecker lived at least 12 years and 11 months: it was banded in Maryland in 1979 and found there again in 1991. 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 111 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 Pileated Woodpecker with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.