Bird prints
Bird plates by eight naturalists, from Audubon’s life-size The Birds of America to Gould’s hummingbirds, Elliot’s pheasants and Levaillant’s parrots, first published between the 1740s and the 1880s. Each print is a facsimile giclée made from the originals, at the size of the original sheet, in a numbered edition of 250.
Egyptian Vulture
$185
Spotted Eagle
$185
Sea Eagle
$185
Osprey
$185
Common Buzzard
$185
Rough-legged Buzzard
$185
Honey Buzzard
$185
Goshawk
$185
Sparrow Hawk
$185
Iceland Falcon
$185
Iceland Falcon – young
$185
Greenland Falcon, light race, adult and young
$185
Greenland Falcon, dark race
$185
Greenland Falcon, dark race, young
$185
Norwegian or Gyrfalcon
$185
Peregrine Falcon
$185
Hobby
$185
Merlin
$185
Orange-legged Hobby
$185
Kestrel
$185
Kite or Glead
$185
Black Kite
$185
Marsh-Harrier
$185
Marsh-Harrier (young)
$185
Hen Harrier
$185
Ash-coloured Harrier
$185
Barn-Owl
$185
Tawny or Brown Owl
$185
Long-eared Owl
$185
Short-eared Owl
$185
Scops Eared Owl
$185
Hawk Owl
$185
Tengmalm’s Owl
$185
Little Owl
$185
Red-necked Goatsucker
$185
Swift
$185
Alpine Swift
$185
Swallow
$185
House-Martin
$185
Sand-Martin
$185
Sand-Martin Young
$185
Bee-eater
$185
Kingfisher
$185
Roller
$185
Hoopoe
$185
Great Grey Shrike
$185
Rose-breasted Shrike
$185
Butcher-Bird
$185
About bird prints
Our bird plates cover more than a century of printmaking, and the technique changes with the period. The oldest are copper engravings: Johann Michael Seligmann’s German versions of the birds of Mark Catesby and George Edwards, published in Nuremberg from 1749 (one of them shows a dodo beside a guinea pig), and Cornelius Nozeman’s Nederlandsche Vogelen, begun in 1770. Between 1801 and 1806 Jacques Barraband’s paintings of parrots and toucans for François Levaillant were engraved in stipple.
The largest sheets are Audubon’s: Robert Havell engraved and aquatinted The Birds of America in London between 1827 and 1838, opening with the Wild Turkey. Most of the other books are lithographs, among them those of John Gould, who worked with a team of artists, and the monographs of Daniel Giraud Elliot, drawn by Joseph Wolf, Joseph Smit and John Gerrard Keulemans. What is The Birds of America? tells how Audubon’s book was made.