The White-Headed Eagle

Mark Catesby's plate of what he called the 'white-headed eagle' — the bald eagle, roughly seven decades before the newly formed United States adopted it as a national symbol — shows the bird stooping toward a fish, talons already extended, in one of the more dynamic compositions in his entire Natural History. Catesby includes two supplementary studies on the same sheet: a small sketch of a different eagle in flight at upper left, and a separate anatomical study of the eagle's head and beak at right, a level of documentary thoroughness typical of his self-etched plates. What to notice: Catesby worked nearly a decade before Audubon was even born, making this one of the earliest surviving painted records of the species — a bird whose population later collapsed under DDT and hunting before 20th-century conservation law brought it back.

Maker

Mark Catesby

Date

1731–1743

Medium of the original

Plate

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00284