Sedge Warbler with Open Bill on a Sedge Stem, Antique Morris Plate, 1896

This is an original wood engraved bird plate, colored by hand, captioned "SEDGE WARBLER." A single bird perches upright on a pale green sedge stem, facing right, with its head raised and its bill open. It has a dark crown, a broad creamy white stripe over the eye, an olive brown back marked with blackish spots, slate gray and brown wing feathers and a pale pinkish buff breast. Its pink feet grip the stem, one above the other, and long arching blades of sedge rise behind the bird and curve away below it.

The caption "SEDGE WARBLER." is engraved in capitals in the lower margin. There is no number or other lettering above the picture, and no engraver's credit can be read within it. The Sedge Warbler is Acrocephalus schoenobaenus.

A History of British Birds was written by the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris (1810 to 1893), rector of Nunburnholme in Yorkshire. The wood blocks for the plates of the work were engraved by Benjamin Fawcett (1808 to 1893) of Driffield in Yorkshire. This plate comes from the fourth edition, issued in six volumes by John C. Nimmo of London, and belongs to the third volume, whose title page is dated 1896 and states that the plates are colored by hand. 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.