Classic bird paintings
Red-shouldered Hawk painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Red-shouldered Hawk as plate 56 of The Birds of America (1827–38), a male and a female he had known for three years, under the same name. That plate is the painting shown here, and a free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org.
Updated
Audubon’s plate: plate 56, “Red-shouldered Hawk”
“I knew the pair represented in the Plate for three years,” Audubon wrote. Each spring they built a new nest within a few hundred yards of the last, and he believed pairs stay together and hunt together all year. He would have preferred the name Red-breasted Hawk.
His plate 71, the Winter Hawk, shows what he first took for a separate species, hunting a bullfrog; he argued the two were different birds, then in his last volume listed the plate as a young Red-shouldered Hawk in winter. A young Red-shouldered Hawk also attacks a covey of bobwhites on plate 76.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vols. 1 (1831) and 5 (1839). See plate 56 free at Audubon.org. See plate 71 free at Audubon.org. See plate 76 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 9: “Red-shouldered Buzzard”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 47: “Red-shouldered Hawk”, with the Red-tailed Hawk. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Red-shouldered Hawk
- Red-shouldered Hawks usually watch from a perch, then swoop down when they spot prey. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Red-shouldered Hawk lived at least 25 years and 11 months: it was banded in California in 1974 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 56 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-shouldered Hawk with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.