After a series of failures as a merchant in Kentucky, Audubon embarked on his most ambitious project to date: The Birds of America (1827–38), a lavish, large-scale folio of color prints of birds native to North America, all rendered life-size and accompanied by descriptive essays. Traveling across the present-day United States, he hunted and killed thousands of birds, posing their bodies for watercolor paintings that communicated key aspects of their appearance and behavior. These watercolors subsequently became the basis of 435 hand-colored engravings, which Audubon marketed to wealthy subscribers in America and Europe.

The Carter’s collection includes 22 engravings from Birds of America, as well as bound volumes of a smaller octavo edition and a complete set of prints from Audubon’s subsequent project, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845–48).

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).