First Fleet artwork collection

Bird with its body facing to the left and its head turned in profile to the right. It is perched on a tree branch against a plain background. The upper parts of the bird are dark brown overlaid with black hatched lines, gradating to mid-brown where they meet the off-white underparts. There are grey patches on the breast which appear to have been painted over with white. 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".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is annotated in ink at top right with the number "153.". 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 "Frivolous Thrush Sup. 2. 186". This has been copied in ink at bottom "Frivolous Thrush, Latham Syn Suppt 2 p. 186". The page reference is to Latham's Second Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1802).
• This bird was more recently described as "indeterminable" in Hindwood K. A. (1970).
• The drawing is annotated iin pencil at top "Lambert Drawing II.18.". This refers to a related set of drawings from the collections of the 13th Earl of Derby, held in the Library at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire.
• 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 12232
• James Lee of Kensington : purchased ; 1902
• Data sheet available.
• Latham, John. Supplement II to the General Synopsis of Birds. London: Leigh, Sotheby, 1802. (p.186)
• Mathews, G.M. and Iredale, T. 'Thomas Watling, Artist', The Austral Avian Record Vol. 5, pt. No. 1 pp.22-32, 1922.
• 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).