Audubon Plate # 177, White-crowned Pigeon  $450

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Print size: 26 1/4" x 39 1/4"; image size: 19" x 23 1/2"

Based on a composition painted at Indian Key, Florida in April 1832.  The landscape artist, George Lehman, painted the flowering limb of the geiger tree.

"I saw them as they approached the shore," Audubon wrote, "skimming along the surface of the waters, flying with great rapidity, much in the manner of the common house species, but not near each other like the Passenger Pigeon.  On nearing the land, they rose to the height of about a hundred yards, surveyed the country in large circles, then with less velocity gradually descended, and alighted in the thickest parts of the mangroves and other low trees."

Appearing quite dark except for the shining white crown, most of these pigeons winter on Caribbean islands from whence they make an annual crossing to the Florida Keys to nest in colonies in coastal mangroves. EHJ