Hooping Crane Adult Male Art Print by John James Audubon

An archival premium quality art print of the Hooping Crane by John James Audubon for sale by Brandywine General Store. The artist painted this large bird for his ornithology book The Birds of America. This majestic looking bird was plate or picture number 226 in the first Havell Edition. The picture shows an older almost pure white bird standing on one leg, while picking at a lizard, with one other lizard already dead. Grus Americana - Audubon says the following about the hooping crane "The Whooping Crane reaches the Western Country about the middle of October, or the beginning of November, in flocks of twenty or thirty individuals, sometimes of twice or thrice that number; the young by themselves, but closely followed by their parents. They spread from Illinois over Kentucky, and all the intermediate States, until they reach the Carolinas on the southern coast, the Floridas, Louisiana, and the countries bordering on Mexico, in all of which they spend the winter, seldom returning northward until about the middle of April, or towards the beginning of May. They are seen on the edges of large ponds supplied with rank herbage, on fields or savannahs, now in swampy woods, and again on extensive marshes. The interior of the country, and the neighbourhood of the sea shores, suit them equally well, so long as the temperature is sufficiently high. The members of a flock sometimes arrange themselves in the form of an acute-angled triangle; sometimes they move in a long line; again they mingle together without order, or form an extended front; but in whatever manner they advance, each bird sounds his loud note in succession, and on all occasions of alarm these birds manifest the same habit. I had, in 1810, the gratification of taking ALEXANDER WILSON to some ponds within a few miles of Louisville, and of shewing him many birds of this species, of which he had not previously seen any other than stuffed specimens. I told him that the white birds were the adults, and that the grey ones were the young. .." Audubon bird print #226