Ptilonorhynchus Violaeus. Satin Bowerbir…

Rare Gould size, lithograph of the Satin Bowerbrid, from Richard Bowdler Sharpe, A Monograph of the Paradisae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae or Bowerbirds. 

As the great scholar, Sacheverell Sitwell states in describing Sharpe’s monograph, in his Fine Bird Books 1700-1900; “A continuation of Gould’s Birds of New Guinea, which was itself completed by Bowdler Sharpe.” 

As John Gould had died prior to the completion of what was to be his final work, The Birds of New Guinea, and the Adjacent Papuan Islands, Including many New Species Recently Discovered in Australia, it was left to Richard Bowdler Sharpe of the British Museum to complete it. Sharpe then followed that great work by producing A Monograph of the Paradisae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae or Bowerbirds which he saw as the completion of not only John Gould’s Birds of New Guinea but Gould’s Birds of Australia. Sharpe used William Hart to draw and lithograph the plates as he had done before in the Birds of New Guinea.

John Gould had included a lithograph of the Satin Bower Bird in his Birds of Australia (plate 247) which was one of only three double folio sized lithographs.

Common names: Satin Bowerbird & Satin bird.
Modern binomial name: Ptilonorhynchus violaceus
First described: Vieillot 1816
Distribution VIC NSW & QLD

References: Sitwell p.142