FOR 36 YEARS, there has been a huge, two-volume set of prints of "Birds of America" by John James Audubon beside my bed. Once in a while throughout that time, I have slipped them out and looked at them in amazement. They have that kind of power.

When the National Gallery of Art put 47 of the original prints from its own complete collection on display, I just had to go for a look.

A friend and I went to Washington on Sunday to see them, and the first thing I noticed was not the prints but the number of visitors to the exhibit. Clearly, Audubon's work continues to excite and inspire, more than 150 years after his death.

This is strange, in a way, for many fine artists have shown us our North American bird life since Audubon. Some of them have done so with equal or greater accuracy, some with more artistic ability and flair for the dramatic. But at the time of his monumental work, none approached Audubon for the powerful combination of the two.

There is a vast and powerful public appeal in wildlife art, and it appears to have originated with Audubon.

When I began viewing these large prints, it was as though I had found a bunch of old friends in the National Gallery. I kept wanting to say, "Hey! I've got that one!" There was Audubon's painting of an osprey clutching a weakfish; the big white pelican that appears too heavy to fly; the flock of mockingbirds attacking--and being attacked by--a rattlesnake in their tree; warblers and ducks and songbirds galore. And the bald eagle--Audubon seemed especially intrigued by this symbol of the mastery of flight.

There wasn't space enough for the gallery to display its entire set of 435 Audubon prints, but the selections include a kind of gallery of the vanished: birds that have disappeared since the artist painted them, in the early 19th century. Audubon's striking portrait of the ivory-billed woodpecker--a bird thought gone forever until its rediscovery last spring in Arkansas--also is shown.