First Fleet artwork collection

Bird in profile, facing to the right, perched on a branch against a plain background. The upper parts of the bird are blue, the throat red, and the breast white with a black mark in the centre. 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 "the Natural size This is a scarce Bird, well resembled, and the only one we have yet seen, the blue feathers on this Bird are of a beautifull changeable blue.".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is inscribed in ink at top right with the number "205.". 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 "Swallow Warbler, Sup. ii. 250". This has been copied in ink at bottom, "Swallow Warbler Latham Syn Suppt 2. p. 250". The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• The drawing is annotated on the reverse "Well resembled & the only one ever seen".
• This bird was identified as the Mistletoe-bird, Dicaeum hirundinaceum (male) 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 12280
• 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).