Snowy Egret painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

Audubon’s plate: plate 242, “Snowy Heron or White Egret”

The lettering under the plate calls the bird an adult male in spring plumage and places the scene on a rice plantation in South Carolina. At Charleston in March 1831, Audubon found few Snowy Herons by the 18th; a week later thousands stood in the marshes and rice fields, all in full plumage.

In the Carolinas in April he found them eating almost nothing but shrimp, and on the Mississippi he saw them picking shrimp off floating logs. Disturbed during courtship, they sometimes tumbled over and over in the air like Tumbler Pigeons. He doubted Alexander Wilson's claim that they reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence: in his experience they rarely went farther north than Long Island.

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835). See plate 242 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

• John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 374: “Snowy Heron”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)

About the Snowy Egret

• A Snowy Egret may stir the bottom with its feet to scare up prey in shallow water. (Source: National Audubon Society)
• Snowy Egrets came back once they were protected from the plume hunting of the 1800s. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild Snowy Egret lived at least 17 years and 6 months: it was banded in Colorado in 1970 and found in Mexico in 1988. 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 242 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.