This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 47, 2019, the original title is "A Brief History of bird illustrations", it is strictly forbidden to reprint privately, and infringement must be investigated
Intern Reporter/Li Xiuli
Chief Writer /Qiu Lian
Audubon's snow bunting, including adult and juvenile (AFP photo)
John James Audubon and John Gould were two of the most famous bird painters of the 19th century. Zhu Lei, an ecology doctor of ornithology who has translated Birds of Paradise: Gould's Hand-Painted Bird Atlas, told the journal that in the era of Audubon and Gould, when scientists described a new species that others had not yet discovered, the simplest basis was a picture. Gould, for example, traveled to Australia between 1838 and 1840 and discovered many new birds, including the budgeon, most of which were recorded in paintings in his magnum opus A Synopsis of the Birds of Australia, and the Adjacent Islands. While some of their drawings are scientifically debatable, they have at least seen the birds with their own eyes.
In 1934, rodger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds was published. In the past bird paintings, birds have a variety of natural postures, and from this book, the posture of birds has begun to have a unified form. And key identifying features, such as white patches and black crowns on the wings, are also marked with arrows.
Gould's great bird of paradise, male and female on the left (courtesy of AFP)
It was the publication of this book that marked the birth of the first bird illustrated book in the modern sense, and bird painting moved from classical to modern. The function of bird painting has changed from a replacement for specimens to serve birdwatchers to identify wild birds in the wild. The book has flourished since its publication, selling more than 3 million copies to date.
When a variety of bird atlases flood the market, what are the criteria for judging a good atlas?
First of all, a hand-drawn book is still better than a photo book. Although the two can be compared with each other, it is still a matter of hand-drawn identification to consider portability when going to the wild. "Photos are susceptible to angles, proximity and light. Moreover, the existing level in China cannot systematically photograph a bird to completely cover the differences between females and males, juveniles and adults, breeding feathers and non-breeding feathers. Zhu Lei introduced. Hand-drawn not only reflects the differences, but also magnifies them.
As far as hand-drawn drawings are concerned, truthfulness, accuracy and comprehensiveness are the three evaluation dimensions. Zheng Qiuyang, the illustration editor of "Museum", usually watches birds, produces bird specimens, and also provides works for bird atlases. She told the journal that the proportions of the bird's body, the position of the leg joints, and the state of the feathers in different postures must be in line with the real situation, so the comparison of the specimen painting will be greatly inferior to the appearance that can be seen after seeing the real bird. And the richer the details, the better the quality of the hand-drawn drawing. Zheng Qiuyang takes a group of pictures of willow warblers as an example, from which the bird's crown pattern, eyebrow spots, tertiary flying feathers, secondary flying feathers, primary flying feathers and other parts are clearly visible, and some will be accompanied by a local enlarged depiction. In line with the picture, the text needs to be precise and condensed, providing sufficient background knowledge.
The following selected bird atlases, Audubon's Birds of North America and Gould's Birds of Paradise belong to the classical era, representing the 1.0 version of the Bird Atlas; the Collins Bird Atlas, the Chinese Bird Field Manual, and the Taiwan Wild Bird Handbook belong to the modern era and are worthy of the 2.0 version of the Bird Atlas. In addition, there is a copy of Zeng Xiaolian's "Yunnan Flowers and Birds", which Zhu Lei described as the 1.5 version, from the perspective of the era, Zeng Xiaolian and the 19th century Audubon and Gould are far apart, but their artistic style also belongs to the Western classical system.
Birds of North America
（Audubon's Birds of America）
Written/illustrated by John James Audubon
In a blue-gray background, a large golden eagle leaps from the top of the mountain, its wings flared back, its neck facing the sky, as if it were about to break through the sky, with a short hook-like beak wide open, sharp claws firmly grasping a North American hare. This work, titled The Golden Eagle, is as usual in Audubon's style of painting: vivid, powerful and impactful.
Jonathan, in Ornithology under the Brush, said of him: "Audubon's approach to depicting birds represents a major leap forward. Compared to many of the still images painted by previous bird painters, Audubon's birds are full of life: his eagles, harriers, and eagles roar down at their prey or tear them to pieces; songbirds stretch their necks to pick berries or grasp butterflies; other birds are always spreading their wings, feathering, fighting or singing. ”
The vivid brushstrokes owe much to Audubon's field observation experience. At the age of 3, he was sent to live in France, where he became interested in nature. In 1806, he returned to the United States by boat and spent most of his time on his father's farm observing and collecting birds, and documenting them in writing and sketching. In 1820, he took a flat-bottomed boat down the Ohio River and embarked on his first bird hunt. He also invented an early version of the Bird Ring, which tracked and observed the behavior of green bulbos over a long period of time by wearing a "thin silver wire" on the legs of the Green Bully, and most of the observations were presented in the book Birds of North America.
Audubon likes to depict birds that have just been killed. The specimen of the aforementioned Golden Eagle is said to have been obtained by Audubon by "inserting a long pointed steel rod into its heart" so that "when the proud prisoner dies, it will not mess up even a feather". Audubon added artistry to the paintings by carefully observing and fiddling with these special specimens, showing the iconic characteristics of the birds. But sometimes Audubon's exaggerated hand-made poses for birds are completely out of line with scientific reality, which is one of the reasons he attracts criticism.
Birds of North America's book includes 435 color prints representing 1,065 bird portraits of 491 species. The book also records some birds that have disappeared permanently today, such as the black-breasted insect warbler and the North American passenger pigeon, so that people can see it now.
Birds of Paradise: Gould's Hand-Painted Bird Atlas
（Gould's Fairest Birds）
Written/illustrated by John Gould
Peking University Publishing Company
In the southwest of the earth, there is a mysterious ancient tropical island - the island of New Guinea. It is less than 790,000 square kilometers of land distributed with nearly 600 unique species of birds, and is regarded as a bird watching mecca by many bird lovers.
Birds of Paradise: Gould's Hand-Painted Bird Atlas focuses primarily on this land, and it's translated from Gould's The Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands, which is originally written about more than 300 species of birds in and around New Guinea, including some of the star bird species that are widely known today, such as the Bird of Paradise.
Gould was another famous bird painter in the 19th century outside of Audubon. Unlike Audubon, who focused solely on North American birds, Gould's ornithological work spanned continents except Africa and Antarctica, making an important contribution to the understanding of exotic birds.
Going further than Audubon, Gould excelled at capturing key features of birds and pursued the precision of his paintings, providing practical assistance for ornithological research. For example, in two sketches called "PinkFoot Goose", he depicts the key parts of the bird's beak, head, claws and so on, and accompanies them with detailed text explanations to ensure that they are accurately presented. Bird painting at that time was relatively mature, and if the female and male forms of a bird were different, they would be drawn separately. But in Gould's paintings, chicks sometimes appear, which were not common at the time.
Zhu Lei, the proofreader of the book, introduced that the text content of the book has been rewritten, including reordering the classification of birds involved in the original book according to the latest classification system, introducing the distribution information of each type, and also writing corresponding introductions for each family in the book.
Collins Bird Atlas (2nd Revised Edition)
（Collins Bird Guide）2nd Revised Edition
Lars Svensson
In the modern bird atlas, the Collins Bird Atlas is a classic that cannot be bypassed.
Zheng Qiuyang told this magazine that the biggest feature of the book is that it shows the living environment and behavior of almost all birds in the form of small pictures. Secondly, different birds are recorded in detail in terms of size, habitat, distribution area, category and sound. At the same time, the standard posture of birds is summarized at a high level, and the feathers of male, female, and juvenile birds in different states such as flight, rest, and feeding are also shown. From an artistic point of view alone, the paintings in this book are also very enjoyable.
"Rich in detail" is the main reason why Zhu Lei believes that this book can get such a high evaluation and market recognition. "For example, the opening chapter of this book in the Gull Family graphically shows in words and drawings the general situation of the changes in the body feathers of the 2-year, 3-year, or 4-year fully adult feathered gulls over different ages, which is of great help in understanding and mastering this recognized group of high-difficulty groups of wild identification. Each bird has at least 3 or more illustrations to reflect the differences between juveniles, males and females, and there are many drawings with habitats. ”
The geographical scope of this book is mainly in Europe, but the bird species involved overlap with the central, western and northern regions of China, so it is of great reference value to Chinese birdwatchers.
At present, this book has plans to be introduced in China, and it is expected to see Chinese version soon. In addition, you can download its APP, Collins Bird Guide, which is an electronic transplant of paper books and can be enlarged and consulted.
Field Manual of Chinese Birds
John Mackinnon waited
Hunan Education Press
Published in 2000, the Field Manual of Chinese Birds directly promoted the development of bird watching in China and is still regarded as the "Bible" by domestic birdwatchers.
Ma Jingneng, the author of this book, is a British zoologist. He recalled to the magazine that when he first came to China in 1986, there were neither native birdwatchers nor books like field guides. At that time, he had just finished the book "Indonesian Wild Bird Handbook" and happened to meet Karen Phillips, an excellent illustrator in Hong Kong. Ms. Phillips herself has a wealth of bird watching experience, and Ma Jing can describe her, in the process of doing bird rings, she can record the appearance of birds with a paintbrush in five minutes. So the two began to cooperate.
The Field Manual of Chinese Birds depicts 1329 species of birds, making it the most abundant of China's atlases of birds. Each bird is accompanied by colored drawings and distribution maps, and hundreds of subspecies are described. The distribution map shows the distribution of summer, winter and residence periods for each bird in China and neighboring countries and regions. In addition to introducing the basic information such as the external morphology, distribution range, habits, and calls of different bird species, the text section also introduces the important bird watching locations and times in China, as well as the conservation status of different birds.
Ma Jingneng has been in the process of revising the book. In addition to adjusting some of the pictures, changes in the classification of some bird species, as well as changes in the distribution of birds due to climate warming, are the focus of this revision. Ma Jingneng also envisions adding a two-dimensional code of sound next to the text, so that readers can feel the birdsong more directly. A revised edition of the book is expected to be published in 2020.
Hand-drawn Catalogue of Wild Birds in Taiwan (2nd Edition)
Xiao Muji / Main Author, Li Zhenglin / Drawing
Published by the Forestry Bureau of the Agricultural Committee of the Executive Yuan and the Taipei Wild Bird Society
In the bird atlas written and painted by the Chinese people, the quality of the text and pictures is superior, and the "Taiwan Wild Bird Hand Drawing Book" is the best.
The depiction of detail in the drawings in this book can be described as the ultimate. For example, not only are the differences in plumage color between adult, juvenile, and juvenile birds plotted, but the special plumage characteristics of some birds are complemented. Including the first-instar winter feathers of birds that take several years to complete the moulting, the feather color of the early breeding, breeding period, late breeding and other stages, and the feather color of the chicks. Subtle information such as the number of forks, the color of the flange, the color of the wingtips, and the morphology of the tailband are also presented by showing the flying silhouette of the bird. This book is also excellent at documenting the habitat of birds, helping readers to identify birds that are very similar in appearance and plumage by comparing habitat information.
There are more than 2,500 illustrations of wild birds in the Hand-Drawn Catalogue of Wild Birds in Taiwan, which is also of practical significance to mainland bird watchers. "In addition to Taiwan's resident birds and endemic birds, taiwan and the mainland share almost all migratory birds in terms of migratory birds. If birdwatchers are in Beijing, Shanghai and the whole of East China, there is no problem in choosing this book in Taiwan. Zhu Lei said. At the time of writing, in order to facilitate the use of mainland birdwatchers, the common bird names in mainland China were also specially noted.
Yunnan Flowers and Birds
Zeng Xiaolian
Nova Press
As one of China's leading plant science painters, Zeng Xiaolian carefully matches each bird he writes about: paint a cluster of rhododendrons around the blue-throated sunbird, because the bird dances when the azaleas are in full bloom; the yellow-breasted weaver finches step on their own delicate nests made of white thatch; and the blue peacock with brilliant feathers is in the densely branched rainforest, exuding a mysterious atmosphere.
In the mid-1960s, Zeng Xiaolian went deep into the tropical rainforest of the southwest border, where he came into close contact with countless "deep mountain birds". In the 1990s, taking advantage of the opportunity to work briefly at the Beijing Botanical Institute, he went to the zoo in the Beijing Botanical Institute every day to observe the posture and habits of birds, and accumulated information for painting birds. After the formal writing, he often went to the herbarium of the Kunming Institute of Zoology to seek reference, and asked ornithologists to check the details of his paintings to ensure that the birds were accurately represented.
(References: Ornithology under the Brush, by Jonathan Elphik, translated by Huihui Xu, The Commercial Press; Birds in the Bush: A Social History of Bird Watching, by Stephen Moss, translated by Liu Tiantian and Wang Ying, Peking University Press)
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