Fish Hawk

Today's Blip comes from the Members' preview of the exhibition of Audubon's Birds of America at the Royal Scottish Museum.

Photographs were permitted so many attendees took advantage, I used both phone and two settings on the camera to ensure at least some came out well enough to share. Actually, the phone won as I am reduced to using the Lumix TZ 10 at present.

John James Audubon was a complex character, born to French parents and although he developed a love and concern for wildlife it did not stop him shooting specimens so that he might paint them. It appears that he was keen to identify birds as new species, perhaps not recognising them in juvenile plumage or in appropriate habitat. One such example is that of the Bird of Washington (collage 2, Left), which has never been substantiated and experts suspect that it is a figment of Audubon's imagination; however, he was vindicated in his accurate depiction of the rattlesnake in the Mockingbirds picture (collage 3, left), which had been judged as false.

At home in the USA his work was not acknowledged but a meeting with the engraver William Home Lizars in Edinburgh, who admired his work and agreed to print pictures, brought him the worldwide attention he desired.

Main picture he called Fish Hawk, now known as the Osprey. I have made three collages of some of my photos:- 
1) is a detail of the head of the Osprey and of the fish it carries
2) L, the Bird of Washington; R, Snowy Owls,
3) L, Mockingbirds; R, Bewick's long-tailed Wren. (Audubon was an admirer of Thomas Bewick's wood engravings, he named this bird after him and it remains so named).

Leaving aside the views including dead birds, the exhibition is stunning, not just for the artistic talent for painting the birds life-sized but for the skill and accuracy of the engravers, mainly Lizars and Robert Havell, who created them in print form for us all to admire.