Classic bird paintings
Eastern Bluebird painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Eastern Bluebird as plate 113 of The Birds of America (1827–38), a male, a female and a young bird on great mullein, under the name Blue-bird. That plate, dated 1831 on its engraver's line, is the painting shown here; a free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org.
Updated
Audubon’s plate: plate 113, “Blue-bird”
Audubon set the family on great mullein, and wrote that bluebirds pounce on grasshoppers from the tops of mullein in old fields. Near Philadelphia, his friend Dr. Richard Harlan told him of a pair nesting in a hole cut for them above a porch. When a hen and her chicks came too close, the male attacked her until she hid under a distant shrub, then flew back to his nest and “carolled his victory with great animation.”
In Florida in winter he found hundreds of bluebirds on every plantation he visited. A tired bluebird also appears on plate 36, about to be caught by a young Stanley Hawk, today's Cooper's Hawk.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 2 (1834). See plate 113 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 134: “Common Blue Bird”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 106: “Bluebird”, with the American Robin. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Eastern Bluebird
- Eastern Bluebirds often watch from a low perch, then flutter down to catch insects. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Eastern Bluebird lived at least 10 years and 6 months: it was banded in New York in 1989 and found in South Carolina in 1999. 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 113 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 Eastern Bluebird with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.