First Fleet artwork collection

Bird, with its body facing left and its head turned in profile to the right. It is depicted standing on a yellow and grey rock, with water on the right represented by a gradated wash of pale yellow through pink to grey overlaid with short grey horizontal lines, against a plain background. The bird is predominantly white overlaid with pale-grey hatched lines, marked with black horizontal striations on the upper parts and a black patch around the eye. The drawing is annotated in ink and framed by a pencil border.

• Port Jackson Painter]
• The drawing is annotated in ink at lower right "The young Tropic Bird From extremity of the Bill to the Tail is 18 Inches".
• The drawing is unsigned and undated.
• The drawing is inscribed in ink at top right with the number "294.". 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.
• This bird was more recently identified as the Red-tailed Tropic-Bird, Phaethon rubricauda (immature) in Hindwood K. A. (1970).
• A separate label is attached to the mount alongside the drawing at lower right. It is inscribed in pencil "Type".
• 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 12359
• James Lee of Kensington : purchased ; 1902
• Data sheet available.
• 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).