Plate 2. Yellow-billed Cuckoo 

This hand-colored engraving of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, from John James Audubon’s celebrated "Birds of America", depicts the bird perched in the foliage of a tree. Audubon was a prolific 19th-century artist known for his detailed and lifelike depictions of North American birds. The visual realism of his works played a vital role in the development of ornithological science.