Blackstart or Black Redstart Pair on a Rock, Hand Colored Print, 1896

An original wood engraved bird plate, colored by hand, captioned "BLACKSTART." Two birds share the plate, one pale and one dark. At the left a gray brown bird with buff white underparts and a lightly spotted throat perches on a short green lichened stump beside a pale rock, its body toward the viewer and its head turned to the left in profile. At the right a slate gray bird with a black scalloped throat and breast stands on the rock facing right, its rufous orange tail trailing down to the left. The pale bird also shows orange at the base of the tail. The rock is washed in pale gray and green.

The caption is engraved in spaced capitals below the picture: "BLACKSTART." There is no number or other lettering above the picture, and no engraver's credit within it. Morris's Blackstart is the bird now called the Black Redstart, Phoenicurus ochruros.

This plate comes from the fourth edition of A History of British Birds by the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris (1810 to 1893), rector of Nunburnholme in Yorkshire, who wrote the text. The edition was issued in six volumes by John C. Nimmo of London, and this plate belongs to the third volume, whose title page is dated 1896 and states that the plates are colored by hand. The wood blocks for the plates of the work were engraved by Benjamin Fawcett (1808 to 1893) of Driffield in Yorkshire. Each plate combines an engraved black key block with a printed gray tint, finished by hand in watercolor.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.