Classic bird paintings
Belted Kingfisher painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Belted Kingfisher as plate 77 of The Birds of America (1827–38), a male and a female, under the same name. A free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org. The pair shown here was painted by John Gerrard Keulemans for Richard Bowdler Sharpe's A Monograph of the Alcedinidae (1868–71), on the world's kingfishers.
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About this painting
This pair comes from Richard Bowdler Sharpe's A Monograph of the Alcedinidae (1868–71); the Alcedinidae are the kingfisher family. Sharpe wrote the text, but the plate is signed by John Gerrard Keulemans, whom Sharpe's introduction calls “my artist, Mr. Keulemans.” In Louis Agassiz Fuertes's plates for Birds of New York (1910–14), the Belted Kingfisher is plate 58, with two cuckoos. More painters in our guide to the painters behind a Birdfolio.
Audubon’s Belted Kingfisher: plate 77, “Belted Kingfisher”
Audubon thought the bird ought to be called the United States' Kingsfisher, since it was the only kingfisher on the inland streams, and because, as he saw it, only the female wore the belt. At the Chickasaw Bluffs on the Mississippi he saw nest holes more than fifty feet below the top of the bank. Male and female dig the tunnel together, he wrote, usually four to six feet long and ending in a rounded room.
Twice he tried to trap one in its burrow at night. The first time it scratched its way out under his net; the next night it worked past the stick he had wedged in the entrance, and he gave up.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 1 (1831). See plate 77 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 255: “Belted Kingfisher”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 58: “Belted Kingfisher”, with Black-billed Cuckoo and Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Belted Kingfisher
- Belted Kingfishers dive headfirst for their prey, and later cough up the parts they can't digest as pellets. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Belted Kingfisher lived at least 5 years and 3 months: it was banded in Maryland in 2003 and found there again in 2006. That is a record from bird banding, not a typical lifespan. (Source: USGS Bird Banding Laboratory, 2025 longevity table.) How long do wild birds live?
Buying a print?
An original plate 77 is a hand-colored sheet about 26 by 38 inches, printed in Britain in 1827–38; many prints sold today are reproductions or small 1840s octavo prints. How to tell an original from a reproduction.
In a Birdfolio, the hardcover book of your own life list, this painting sits beside the Belted Kingfisher with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.