In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 9th in the series.
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The committee that drew up the common names for birds did a terrible job on the parrots. Just about every small parrot with a long tale was called a parakeet from whatever part of the world it occurs. The word ‘conure’ for most of the South American species seems to have been dumped. Thus what was known as the Red-bellied Conure is now the Maroon-bellied Parakeet. Other common names, Brown-eared Conure, for example were commonly used by people who kept and bred the species—Pyrrhura frontalis. The species is found from southeastern Brazil to north-eastern Argentina, including eastern parts of Paraguay and Uruguay.
The article accompanying this plate was written by Arthur Alfred Prestwich (1903-1987) who was for many years Secretary of the Avicultural Society. He devoted a great deal of his time researching the history and first breeding of various species, but especially parrots, in captivity.
The plate was the work David Morrison Reid Henry (1919-1977) in 1955. He signed his work as D.M. Henry and was an artist favoured by the Avicultural Society for the plates published in this period.
Avicultural Magazine 60, 1954
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