British Bird's Nests: How, Where, and When to find and identify them

Description:

New edition, revised and enlarged, of one of the landmark books in the development of British bird photography. Richard Kearton (1862-1928), working closely with his younger brother Cherry Kearton (1871-1940), was a pioneer of photographing birds and other wildlife in their natural surroundings. The original edition, published in 1895, was the first book of its kind to be illustrated throughout with photographs taken directly from nature, and helped establish photography as an important means of recording and studying wildlife. This substantially enlarged 1907 edition incorporates later work by the brothers and is illustrated with numerous photographs by Cherry and Richard Kearton, together with 15 colour plates of birds' eggs and six 'Rembrandt' photogravure plates.

Kearton provides practical accounts of the nests and breeding habits of British birds, describing where and when nests may be found and the characters by which nests and eggs can be identified. The book combines detailed field observation with the Keartons' remarkable photographs of nests, nesting sites and birds in the wild. The brothers' painstaking and often ingenious approach to wildlife photography made them amongst the most important figures in the early history of nature photography. The preface states that the brothers “travelled by railroad and steamboat alone upwards of thirty thousand miles, and exposed over ten thousand plates in pursuit of bird photography”.

Mullens & Swann p. 323.

Condition

8vo (236x164mm), orig. cloth, endpapers slightly browned. Some light foxing to plates. Vg.