Flights of fancy

Did you know that the first person to cage a budgerigar was John Gould, the 19th-century English artist/naturalist? Or that the word ‘penguin’ is derived from the Welsh words ‘pen’ (white) and ‘gwyn’ (head)? Or that there is no scientific (in other words fossil) evidence that the dodo ever existed? These are just three informative nuggets from Katrina Cook’s entertaining text for her sumptuously illustrated elephant-folio-size history of bird art.

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That Birds is as enjoyable to read as to look at reflects the author’s unusual combination of artistic and scientific talent: a bird artist, qualified bird ringer and curator at the Natural History Museum; a specialist in printing techniques, who has a particular interest in the art of John James Audubon (1785-1851), widely regarded as the supreme bird artist.

Birds is a pleasingly idiosyncratic pictorial history of the last 700 years of bird art and illustration. There are seven thematic and roughly chronological chapters, which give full rein to the author’s preferences. The peerless Audubon gets a chapter to himself and the evolution of print technology is a prominent narrative thread. For much of the 700 years covered, de luxe editions of fine-art bird books matched ornithological discoveries with the best bird artists for the delectation of rich connoisseurs. Most of these books are hidden away in the atmospherically controlled inner sanctums of the world’s greatest libraries.

The noble dimensions of Birds, albeit half the size of Audubon’s double- elephant-folio Birds of America, is itself a reminder of this heroic tradition of bird-book publishing. It also has one of Audubon’s most glorious images, the ruby-coloured Greater Flamingo, as its cover. The order of the 435 hand-coloured engraved plates for Birds of America makes no ornithological sense until you know that subscribers received them in successive sets of five.