Classic bird paintings

Tree Swallow painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits

John James Audubon painted the Tree Swallow as plate 98 of The Birds of America (1827–38), a male and a female, under the name Green-blue, or White Bellied Swallow. That plate is the painting shown here, and a free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org.

Updated

Two Tree Swallows in flight against a pale sky, a glossy blue-green bird above a white-bellied one
Audubon's plate 98, the White-bellied Swallow: two Tree Swallows in flight. John James Audubon, The Birds of America (1827–38)

Audubon’s plate: plate 98, “Green-blue, or White Bellied Swallow”

Some prints of this plate are numbered 100 by mistake. Audubon wrote that the Tree Swallow often spends the winter in Louisiana, near the marshes by Lake Pontchartrain and Bayou St. John outside New Orleans, and in spring skims over city streets and nearby meadows.

His friend John Bachman wrote to him about the afternoon of October 16, 1833, when so many of these swallows passed south that the air grew dark. Audubon also noted a less charming side: “So quarrelsome is this Swallow, that it is almost continually fighting with its own species.”

Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vols. 1 (1831) and 5 (1839). See plate 98 free at Audubon.org.

More classic portraits, free to see

  • John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 46: “White-bellied Swallow”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 88: “Tree Swallow”, with 5 other birds. Free scan (Internet Archive)

About the Tree Swallow

  • Tree Swallows usually feed in flight, and can pick food from the surface of the water. (Source: National Audubon Society)

The oldest known wild Tree Swallow lived at least 12 years and 1 month: it was banded in Ontario in 1986 and found there again in 1998. 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 98 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 Tree Swallow with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.