Ferruginous Duck Drake among Reeds, Plate CLXXXI after Lilian Medland, c. 1909

This is an original antique photogravure, printed in black and gray without added color, showing a drake Ferruginous Duck swimming to the right past a clump of tall reeds at the left. The bird sits low in still water, the head rounded and dark, the iris drawn white, the bill gray with a dark nail, and a white bar showing along the folded wing. The flanks are marked with dark bars, the white under tail coverts stand out below the dark tail, and one foot shows beneath the surface.

No name of the bird is printed on the plate. The lettering below the image reads "1/2 scale" at the center and "PLATE CLXXXI." 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 left. The identification rests on the drawing itself: the white eye, the white under tail and the white wing bar on an otherwise dark, compact diving duck mark the drake Ferruginous Duck.

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 reeds at one side and the open water at the other give the plate a balanced, quiet composition that suits a narrow frame and a pale mount.

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