Classic bird paintings
Red-bellied Woodpecker painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Red-bellied Woodpecker on plate 416 of The Birds of America (1827–38), which shows five kinds of woodpeckers. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. The picture shown here is from his smaller octavo edition (1840–44), where the Red-bellied Woodpecker has a plate of its own, number 270.
Updated
About this painting
In the octavo edition of the 1840s the Red-bellied Woodpecker has a page to itself, plate 270, which is the picture shown here. More about both editions in our guide to John James Audubon.
Audubon’s Red-bellied Woodpecker: plate 416, “Hairy Woodpecker; Red-bellied Woodpecker; Red-shafted Woodpecker; Lewis' Woodpecker; Red-breasted Woodpecker”
On plate 416, near the end of The Birds of America, the Red-bellied Woodpeckers are figures 3 and 4: “I have represented a male and a female, in their perfect spring plumage.” In winter Audubon found it the most common woodpecker in the Florida pine barrens, especially on plantations along the St. Johns River.
The crew of the US schooner Spark called it chaw-chaw, from its call: a quick chow or chaw that sounded, he wrote, as if the bird had a bad cold, yet carried a hundred yards. He never found a nest in Louisiana or South Carolina, but did in Pennsylvania orchards, usually where a branch meets the trunk.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 5 (1839). See plate 416 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 270: “Red-bellied 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 64: “Red-bellied Woodpecker”, with the Northern Flicker. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Red-bellied Woodpecker
- Red-bellied Woodpeckers can store nuts and seeds in bark crevices for the winter. (Source: National Audubon Society)
- Despite the name, the reddish wash on its belly can be hard to see in the field. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Red-bellied Woodpecker lived at least 12 years and 3 months: it was banded in Georgia in 2003 and found there again in 2012. 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 416 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 Red-bellied Woodpecker with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.