As soon as I got this book, I knew I had to get all the images edited and posted, as they are some of the nicest bird plates I have ever seen. The book not only has beautiful illustrations, but is historically notable because it was the first time hand-colored lithographs were used to illustrate a state bird book. It is one of the favorite books in my library, and the scans do not even begin to do justice to the depth of color on the plates.
It is a very hefty book, and the binding is fairly weak. The cover is in very good condition, though, and is intact and clean complete with the gilt picture of a bird. Unless it has been purchased ver recently, teh book itself is available in the bookstore at ZephyrusBooks. While the plates have unfortunately been stamped by an overzealous Australian librarian and do have some flaws and spotting, the book remains one of the nicer extant copies I have come across. This is largely because the cover is in such good shape, not to mention that the book is still intact (there were only 300 or so copies issued with the colored plates, and most of these seem to have been dissembled so the plates could be individually framed or sold).
There are 141 full plates each containing two to three birds, and 303 figures, all of which I have edited as stand alone images from their plate. The plates are in one gallery, and the images in another. Names on images are the common names of the period as indicated in the book. Period Latin names along with any modern and other common and Latin names are in the captions and descriptions. As the plates contain multiple birds, they are titled only by the plate number with all the other information in the caption and description.
The images available for free here on OBA are well sized and should be good for any web based or home crafty kind of purpose. For those who need much larger images, for publishing or or larger projects or anything else, I have them for sale on Alamy as individual figures with all text removed. I earn money on Alamy sales through this link, and you can see the entire portfolio here: De Kay Birds on Alamy
Title: Zoology of New York, or the New-York Fauna, Part II, Birds
Author: James Ellsworth De Kay
Artist: J. W. (John William) Hill
Lithographer: George Endicott; and Packard, Gavit & Co.
Publisher: J. F. Schreiber
Date Published: 1844
There are two galleries to make browsing the many images a bit more manageable. The first, presented on this page, is for the individual bird images which I have extracted. The other is going to be posted and linked to from here, as well as on the Home page and the Nature and Science page..
