$28.50
3 in stock
Description
This 1901 poster depicts native birds of the New Zealand forest and wetlands. The colourful kea, a mountain parrot, is at the centre. Some of the birds – including tui, bellbird, fantail and kingfisher are still quite common. The yellowhead and fernbird are more scarce, and local knowledge may be needed to find them. Several others including the stitchbird now only survive in pest-free sanctuaries. Others, the piopio and bush wren have become extinct since this poster was painted.
The image used in this poster is a cromolithograph (c 1900) by William Shaw Diedrich Schmidt. The birds in Schmidt’s work were based on the artwork of J.G Keulemans in Walter Buller’s A History of the Birds of New Zealand.
