A white bird with long legs, a long neck, and a narrow, pointed beak stands facing our right in profile against a deep landscape in this vertical, colored engraving. Feathers lying close to the neck and body resemble long, soft hair cascading down and off the back of the head, off the bottom of the neck where it meets the body, and around the tail. The bird’s beak and legs are black, and the eye we see and its feet are pale yellow. It stands on a dirt-packed riverbank in front of tall grasses. Grassy fields lead into the deep distance to the right, where a house and outbuildings sit on the horizon about a third of the way up the composition. A person carrying a rifle approaches the riverbank from the far side of a hill near the lower right corner of the print. Thin gray clouds skirt across a mostly blue sky above. Text is printed beneath the image: “Drawn from Nature, by J.J. Audubon. F.R.S. F.L.S.” to the left; “Snowy Heron, or White Egret, Ardea Candidissima, Gm. Male adult spring plumage River Plantation, South Carolina” in the center; and “Engraved, Printed, & Coloured by R. Havell, London. 1835.” to the right.
