A group of bird books were a feature of a May 19 sale held by Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) in Carlisle and shown here is one of the 12 signed coloured plates produced by Archibald Thorburn for a 1919, limited edition work called Birds of Prey.
One of only 150 such copies and in a later red morocco binding, it sold at £6000.
Bid to £5500 was a copy of Sclater & Salvin’s Exotic Ornithology… New or Rare Species of American Birds, published by Quaritch in 1869. Illustrated with 100 hand-coloured litho plates, this work actually focuses only on what the authors called birds of the neotropical region - on the grounds that “No other part of the world can vie with Tropical America in the richness of its avifauna”.