First Fleet artwork collection

Bird perched on a branch, its body facing right with its head turned in profile to the left, against a plain background. The bill is long and curved, and has a 'brush' tongue protruding from it. The face is black, the back of the head pale yellow, and the throat white with darker patches. The breast and belly are pale yellow with grey horizontal striations. The wings are dark grey overlaid with black hatched lines, and the tail, seen from underneath is black - dark grey with white at tips. The drawing is framed by a pencil border and annotated in ink and pencil.

• Port Jackson Painter]
• The drawing is annotated in ink at bottom "Natural size. This Bird lives on Flies and Honey, when flying it makes a singular noise as if the tips of the wings were beat together under the Birds Belly. It hovers over flowers and extracts the Honey with its brush tongue.".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is inscribed in ink at top right with the number "103.". This refers to the catalogue list compiled by John Latham c. 1801 which was acquired with the drawings, and is filed with them at the end of the Watling Drawings series.
• The drawing is annotated in pencil at top "Slender-billed Creeper female". This has been copied in ink at bottom, "Slender-billed Creeper. Female Latham Syn Suppt 2 p 165.". The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• This bird was more recently identified as the Eastern Spinebill, Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris in Hindwood K. A. (1970).
• The author of this catalogue record is Suzanne Stenning.
• By permission of the trustees of the Natural History Museum (London)
• Two sets of transparencies held in the Natural History Museum (London) Zoology Library and Picture Library: Picture Library reference number 12182
• James Lee of Kensington : purchased ; 1902
• Data sheet available
• Latham, John. Supplement II to the General Synopsis of Birds. London: Leigh, Sotheby, 1802.
• Hindwood K. A. 'The "Watling" drawings with incidental notes on the "Lambert" and the "Latham" drawings', Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for the years 1968-69 (1970).