Gallery: Violet-green Swallows at Home

From the Autumn 2020 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.

“Highlighting the life history of species in turn demonstrates the importance of biodiversity,” says Bartels Science Illustrator Jen Lobo, which explains why she took care to include prey items—a crane fly and a green rose chafer beetle—in this drawing. Her home-life portrait of a pair of breeding Violet-green Swallows adorns the official Cornell Lab of Ornithology membership tote bag in 2020.

For this artwork, Lobo says she was inspired by the woodpecker nest illustrations of 19th-century naturalist and artist Genevieve Jones. “I wanted to show Violet-green Swallows as secondary cavity nesters repurposing an abandoned woodpecker hole, while at the same time paying homage to an artist whose work I admire,” she says.