Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

A drake, or male, Northern pintail in breeding plumage may well be the duck species most often depicted by wildlife artists. Little wonder – its long neck, elegant contours, refined palette, and namesake tail feathers make it a truly unforgettable bird. This drake has a lot of nicknames, too – “bull sprig,” “spike tail,” “chocolate head” – but the most laudatory is “greyhound of the air,” which fits perfectly when you see the sleek, slender duck streak by. Grey, though? The pintail’s color column reveals that the grey appearance we associate with the bird is actually a fine patterning of white and black on many of the duck’s feathers.

Although most waterfowl species are experiencing population *increases* (largely due to the efforts of hunters and conservation nonprofits focused on wetland habitat conservation and restoration), the pintail has not benefited as most ducks have. Pintail nest in the prairies of the northern Midwest and central Canada, where agricultural practices have changed markedly since the 1950s. Instead of allowing fields to go fallow during the summer, farmers now have their land in continuous crop rotation, which greatly diminishes pintail nesting success. There’s no shortage of action by state and federal agencies, but the outlook isn’t great; since 1966, the pintail population has declined by 75%. (If you’d like to help fund the research on and conservation efforts for pintail, I encourage you to buy a federal duck stamp. The stamp costs $25, features handsome art by a contemporary wildlife artist, and 98 cents of every dollar is put directly toward waterfowl conservation.)

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.