$28.50
2 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.
