Hummingbird prints

Hummingbirds were John Gould’s passion, and his monograph of the family has five volumes with 360 hand-coloured lithographs. Our prints come from the first four, in his order: the sawbills, sicklebills and hermits of volume 1; the sabrewings, topazes, hillstars, mangoes and jacobins of volume 2, ending with the Snow-cap; the coquettes, racket-tails, trainbearers, comets and thornbills of volume 3; and in volume 4 the Ruby and Topaz, the Giant Hummingbird, the Sword-bill and the puff-legs. Start with the Crimson Topaz or the Marvellous Hummingbird. All of them are on Family of Hummingbirds, and What books did John Gould publish? sets it among his other works.

The other plates come from two very different books. Jean Théodore Descourtilz, who lived in Brazil, drew his hummingbirds at the flowers they feed on, in Oiseaux brillans du Brésil (1834). Audubon’s four hummingbirds, the ruby-throated hummingbird of plate 47 among them, share the large sheet of his eagles.