Plate 2
Havell XXXI
Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
“On his flatboat trip down the Mississippi in 1820 Audubon sighted this bald eagle, or “white-headed eagle Falco leucocephalus” as he called it, near Little Prairie, Missouri, [...] “The figure of this noble bird,” Audubon wrote delightedly, “is well known throughout the civilized world, emblazoned as it is on our national standard, which waves in the breeze of every clime, bearing to distant lands the remembrance of a great people living in a state of peaceful freedom.” Audubon worked for four days to complete a drawing of the eagle feeding on a Canada goose. Eight years later in England, dissatisfied with the results, he made this water-color copy of the eagle, replacing the goose with a catfish copied from another early drawing. [...] Pursued by hunters and plagued by a declining birth rate, it may, indeed, disappear from the country of which it has long been the symbol.”
Source: The Original Water-Color Paintings by John James Audubon. Copyright 1966 by American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.
Learn more about this print on the National Audubon Society's website.