American red-headed Woodpecker and American Bluebird. Bigland’s Natural History of Birds, Fishes, Reptiles,and Insects
I am certainly not well versed in idioms, but I’ve heard some doozies: (“well, if that don’t beat the band,”) since moving to the South. Most of these—shame on me, I Googled—include a whole lot of $#@!s. If I had my druthers I would go ahead and use them in this blog because, many of them are cute as a bug’s ear in spite of the $#@!s. But it was the familiar and family-friendly “birds of a feather” that seemed appropriate for the Library’s third September Bird Blog because I wanted to share a variety of additional nineteenth century ornithology color-plate book examples.
Interest in naturalist illustration grew faster than a knife fight in a phone booth during this period, and a few of these selections are, along with Wilson and Audubon books, scarce as hen’s teeth!
The California Woodpecker. Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. Cassin, 1853-1855
There are so many bird illustration publications that I’ll first list, along with a few images, those works which, along with Wilson and Audubon, made significant contributions to ornithology illustration: