Enter nineteenth-century artists John and Elizabeth Gould. From 1830-1881 the Goulds, and other artists, published “3,100 unique images … many being the first illustrations of previously unknown species.” The Goulds focused on birds of Britain, Europe, Australia, Asia, New Guinea, even the Himalayas, rivaling in artistry the work of American John James Audubon.
Lederer has gathered twenty-five of the most stunning images from the Goulds’ publications into “Vintage Birds: A Guidebook And Matching Game” ($29.95, boxed, including the guidebook and fifty cards, from Hardie Grant Books). The game is simple; cards are spread out on a flat surface, face down, and players take turns turning over a pair, hoping to find and remember the matches, each with one of the vintage illustrations.
The guidebook introduces the Goulds, discusses “what makes a bird?” (including what to feed them), provides rules to the game, and then, in glorious full color, tells the story of each of the birds, mostly from territories outside North America. The images on the cards match chapters in the guidebook and Lederer envisions players saying something about each bird image revealed.
The male plumage of Pink Cockatoo from Central Australia “is soft-textured white and salmon-colored with white, red, and yellow erectile crest and orangish underwings.” The Eurasian Hoopoe’s “common name is derived from its ‘oop, oop, oop’ call” as is its scientific name, Upupa epops.
The Snowy Owl nests “on the treeless tundra above the Arctic Circle … the heaviest of all North American owls” weighing up to 6.5 pounds. The male Lesser Florican on the Indian subcontinent may jump almost ten feet six hundred times a day to attract a female (who “responds by whistling”).
Readers will whistle as well at these extraordinary vintage birds.
