Duck, goose and swan prints

Audubon’s waterfowl are the large sheets here. The Trumpeter Swan of plate 406 curves its neck down to the water and fills the width of the page, and the Canada Goose, the Canvas-backed Duck and the Hooded Merganser are all drawn at life size. One plate shows a bird that no longer exists: the Pied Duck of plate 332, now called the Labrador Duck, gone by the 1870s and one of the birds that exist only in Audubon’s book.

John Gould’s geese, swans and ducks come from the fifth volume of The Birds of Great Britain, the Natatores, or swimming birds. Many of his species are in Audubon too, among them the Eider, the Harlequin Duck and the King Duck, so an American and a British plate can hang side by side. The oldest plates are Dutch: Nederlandsche Vogelen shows the Wilde Eend, the mallard, with drake and duck on separate plates. Gould’s Mandarin Duck is from The Birds of Asia.