Classic bird paintings

Red-tailed Hawk painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

John James Audubon painted the Red-tailed Hawk as plate 51 of The Birds of America (1827–38), under the same name: a male and a female fighting in the air over a young hare. That plate is the painting shown here, and a free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. His dark Black Warrior is plate 86.

Updated

Two Red-tailed Hawks locked together in the air, one on its back still gripping a dead hare, above distant gray hills
Audubon's plate 51: a male and a female Red-tailed Hawk fighting over a hare. John James Audubon, The Birds of America (1827–38)

Audubon’s plate: plate 51, “Red-tailed Hawk”

Audubon made this drawing after watching two of these hawks fight hard over a young hare. The male has the upper hand, but the female, driven toward the ground with her breast turned up, still holds the hare in one foot. Once a pair had raised their young, he wrote, they grew so unfriendly that they chased and robbed each other.

Over Louisiana plantations he heard its long cry, which he spelled kae, and saw it roost high in magnolias. Plate 86, the Black Warrior, shows the dark bird now counted as the Harlan's form of the Red-tailed Hawk. He named it for his friend Dr. Richard Harlan of Philadelphia, after finding a pair near St. Francisville, Louisiana, and drew the female while she was still alive.

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831). See plate 51 free at Audubon.org. See plate 86 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

  • John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 7: “Red-tailed Buzzard”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
  • John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 8: “Harlan's Buzzard”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 46: “Red-tailed Hawk”, with the Cooper's Hawk. Free scan (Internet Archive)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 47: “Red-tailed Hawk”, with the Red-shouldered Hawk. Free scan (Internet Archive)

About the Red-tailed Hawk

  • A Red-tailed Hawk often watches for prey from a high perch, then swoops down to catch it. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild Red-tailed Hawk lived at least 30 years and 8 months: it was banded in Michigan in 1981 and found there again in 2011. 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 51 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-tailed Hawk with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.