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An Excellent Art and Nature Resource from the Audubon Society

Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. How else will I afford my used book addiction? You can read my full disclosure statement here.


I woke up to an excellent surprise email this morning: the Audubon Society has made available 435 high resolution prints of bird prints from The Birds of America by John James Audubon for free! For the mere “price” of a newsletter signup, you can create your own collection of beautiful, accurate, and detailed prints for your family.

(You can find hardcover, paperback, and kindle versions of The Birds of America here. It seems there have been many printings over the years, but this one seemed the most available and affordable. For a modern book, you should try field guides from National Geographic, the Audubon Society, Sibley, and Peterson’s. They usually come in different versions for the Eastern/Central and Western US. I really enjoyed the Nat Geo Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America.)

I chose birds that sounded familiar to me, even though I wasn’t always sure which variety of the species is the one I know. I’m still very much an amateur, but looking through these prints made me realize how much I’ve learned over the last year! I’ve only read four books and manned a bird feeder for one winter. Only one book included birds local to my area (Long Island), and it wasn’t even a bird-specific book. Yet I recognized many of the birds from my feeder and from my reading. Except the sparrows. I still can’t figure out which kind of sparrows they are. All the small brown birds are hard for me to differentiate at this stage.

So how might you use these prints? The only limit is your imagination, honestly.

  • An artist study of Audubon as an artist, not focusing on the birds themselves, but more on his technique and style
  • Art for your home, to bring a little nature indoors
  • Nature study, specifically bird identification
  • Attention training! Compare two plovers or owls or puffins or ducks… what’s different? What’s similar?

How else would you use them? Have a favorite print? Personally, I really like the flamingo because no matter how many times I’ve seen them in real life, I refuse to believe they’re real creatures. Surely they only live in places like Wonderland!

 

The Birds of America | The Audubon Society

Short Biography of John James Audubon | The Audubon Society

Sidenote, while researching this, I found out there’s a Birds of America coloring book! Ummm yes please.