The Snow Bird
A small, unshowy plate — winter finches on a red mulberry branch.
- Work
- Snow Bird, Plate 13, from The Birds of America
- Artist / naturalist
- John James Audubon (engraved by Robert Havell Jr.)
- Origin & date
- London, 1827
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$19.00
The story
Not every Birds of America plate needed drama: the snow bird — what's now called the dark-eyed junco, a common winter visitor across most of North America — gets a quiet, modestly scaled composition, two birds perched on a bare red mulberry branch against nothing but open page. Audubon painted juncos during his years working the Mississippi frontier, where the birds' arrival each autumn was a reliable, unremarkable seasonal marker rather than a rare sighting worth theatrical staging. What to notice: the empty white space surrounding the birds is itself a compositional choice, not an absence of one — after plates crowded with a dozen parakeets or a pair of hawks locked in combat, Audubon knew a small, plainly perched bird sometimes reads truer left alone on the page.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper: smooth, no glare.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guarantee.
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