Common Scoter Drake on Open Water, Plate CLXXXIX after Lilian Medland, c. 1909

This is an original antique photogravure, printed in black and gray without added color, showing a drake Common Scoter swimming to the right on choppy water. The plumage is black throughout, without a white mark on head or wing, and the head is held up on a thick neck. The bill carries a rounded knob at its base and a pale patch on the ridge of the upper mandible around the nostril, the only relief in an otherwise wholly dark bird.

No name of the bird is printed on the plate. The lettering below the image reads "1/2 scale" at the center and "PLATE CLXXXIX." at the right, the fraction giving the size of the drawing against the living bird, and the signature "L. M. Medland" is drawn in the water at lower right. All black plumage without any white in the wing, together with the knob at the base of the bill, identifies the drake Common Scoter.

Charles Stonham's The Birds of the British Islands was published in London by E. Grant Richards in five volumes between 1906 and 1911, and this plate belongs to the third volume, which carries the account through the cormorants, herons, geese, swans and ducks. All of the plates are after drawings by Lilian M. Medland, who later married the ornithologist Tom Iredale and moved to Australia. Her drawings were reproduced in photogravure, a photomechanical intaglio process that keeps the soft gradations of tone of the original drawing, and the printed surface sits within a plate mark.

The dark silhouette against pale water makes a strong, simple image that pairs naturally with the Velvet Scoter plate that follows it in the book.

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