Classic bird paintings
Wood Duck painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Wood Duck as plate 206 of The Birds of America (1827–38), under the name Summer or Wood Duck: males and females with their nest. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. The Wood Ducks shown here were painted by Louis Agassiz Fuertes for Frank M. Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America (1912).
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About this painting
Louis Agassiz Fuertes signed this pond scene, a color plate in the 1912 edition of Frank M. Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, under maple leaves with a water lily in bloom. In Fuertes's plates for Elon H. Eaton's Birds of New York (1910–14), the Wood Duck is plate 14, with a shoveler and a Blue-winged Teal. More in our guide to Louis Agassiz Fuertes.
Audubon’s Wood Duck: plate 206, “Summer or Wood Duck”
Audubon's plate shows males and females with their nest. He found Wood Ducks nesting in hollow branches and old woodpecker holes; near Henderson, Kentucky, one pair laid its eggs three springs running in the old nest hole of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Ducklings hatched over the water simply jumped, he wrote, while from a hole farther off the mother sometimes carried them down one by one in her bill.
At Henderson he decided to tame some. His dog Juno caught ducklings for him without hurting them, and he shut them in flour barrels, only to find them hooked by their needle-sharp claws to the rims, ready to escape. Fed on cornmeal and locusts, they grew up, were pinioned, and later nested in boxes he set over the pond in his garden.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835). See plate 206 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 391: “Wood Duck - Summer Duck”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 14: “Wood Duck”, with Northern Shoveler and Blue-winged Teal. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Wood Duck
- Wood Ducks pick food from the surface of the water and also look for food on land. (Source: National Audubon Society)
- Hunting and the loss of nesting places cut Wood Duck numbers in the late 1800s. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Wood Duck lived at least 22 years and 6 months: it was banded in Oregon in 1962 and found in California in 1984. 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 206 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 Wood Duck with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.