North American Birds
While the Lloyd certainly holds a wide range of volumes that cover world zoology and natural history, as a North American institution, it naturally has very strong holdings on North American topics in natural history. Among the greats are Mark Catesby, William Bartram, Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon. Some you will see here in this introduction to the field. For more in-depth information, take a look at our holdings on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Passenger pigeon, and regional works.
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William Bartram. Botanical and Zoological Drawings, 1756-1788. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968.
Plate 16 - Bittern.
William Bartram (1739-1823) is best known for his botanical explorations and plant discoveries in the southeastern United States. But he was also a self-taught nature artist who received commissions from wealthy English men and women to produce drawings of plants and animals. This volume is a reporduction of the drawings he made for Dr. John Fothergill of London, a Quaker physician who asked Bartram to tour the southeastern colonies to collect seeds and plants for his garden. The drawings were the companion to Bartram's account of his journey, Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida (1791).
Interestingly, Bartram and Alexander Wilson (see below) were neighbors on the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia, and it was Bartram who encouraged Wilson to collect specimens of birds and to learn how to draw and paint them.
Alexander Wilson. American Ornithology, or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States. Edinburgh: Printed for Constable and Co., 1831.
In 1794, Wilson left Scotland with his nephew to find a better life in America. He settled near Philadelphia after taking a teaching job and became friendly with his neighbor William Bartram, the famous botanical explorer. Bartram helped develop Wilson's interest in ornithology and in 1802 Wilson began to travel widely, watching and painting birds and collecting subscribers for the book he was planning to publish. The original American Ornithology (1808-1814) was a nine-volume work illustrating 268 species of birds, 26 of which had never been described previously. (The 1831 edition held by the Lloyd is not illustrated except on the title page, which is presented here.)
Wilson met John James Audubon (see below) in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1810 and tried to persuade Audubon to become a subscriber to his work. Audubon declined because he could not afford it, but later consulted Wilson's books whenever he had the chance.
The Book of Nature. Philadelphia: Sam'l C. Atkinson, 1834. Edited by an Association of Scientific Gentlemen of Philadelphia.
Volume 1, plate 13 - various birds, including a swallowtail.
John James Audubon. Birds of America. New York: Macmillan, 1937.
Plate 431 - Flamingo.
Audubon (1785-1851) was born in Haiti but raised in France, where he developed his life-long interest in birds. He came to America in 1803 to avoid conscription in Napoleon's army and spent the next five years at his father's plantation near Philadelphia. During this time, he conducted the first known bird-banding experiment in North America: he tied silver threads to the legs of Eastern Phoebes and watched them return to the same nesting spots every year. He also began drawing and painting birds and recording their behavior.
Audubon spent many years in Kentucky and Louisiana, taking odd jobs to support his ambition to produce a comprehensive work on the birds of America. He developed his own method of drawing birds which began with using fine shot to prevent them from being torn to pieces. He then used fixed wires to prop them up into a natural position, rather than stuffing them into a rigid pose. He worked primarily with watercolor early on, then added colored chalk or pastel to add softness to feathers. Small species were often drawn to scale, placed on branches with berries, fruit, and flowers, sometimes in flight, and often with many inidividual birds to present views of anatomy. Larger birds were often placed in their ground habitat or perching on stumps. At times, as with woodpeckers, he would combine several species on one page to offer contrasting features. Nests and eggs are frequently depicted as well, and occasionally predators, such as snakes. He usually illustrated both male and female variations, and sometimes juveniles.
The end result was Birds of America, 435 hand-colored, life-sized prints of 497 birds, made from engraved copper plates measuring around 39 by 26 inches. It remains one of the greatest examples of book art and one of the most important contributions to American natural history.
Jacob H. Studer. The Birds of North America. New York: Published under the auspices of the Natural Science Association of America, 1895. Illustrated by Theodore Jasper.
Plate 30 - Red-tailed hawks.
Thomas Nuttall. A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern North America. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1897.
2nd revised and annotated edition by Montague Chamberlain.
Volume 2, plate 14 - wading birds.