Audubon Plate # 96, Columbian Jay  $450 

Print size: 26 1/4" x 39 1/4"; image size: 24 1/2" x 36"

Click the small image for greater detail.

Each of the two jays was painted separately and in 1829 arranged in a composition depicting them perched on a dead limb entwined with poison ivy.

"The specimen from which the drawings were taken," Audubon wrote, "was presented to me by a friend who had received it from the Columbia River, and is the only individual...which I did not receive on the spot."

Actually, the bird is a native of Mexico rather than the Columbia River area in Oregon, and in painting it, Audubon departed from an early resolve never to draw from a stuffed specimen.  In so doing, he erred and included the magnificent magpie jay with his northwestern birds.  EHJ