Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18359

    ‘The red woodpecker’

    Date
    1790
    Creator
    Peter Mazell (1721, Irish) , Engraver
    Object type
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 245mm
    width (page): 185mm
    height (print): 195mm
    width (print): 155mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > bird
    Description
    Ornithological study of a banded woodpecker, Chrysophlegma miniaceum, referred to here as picus miniatus. Shown in right profile, pecking into the trunk of a tree.

    Inscribed below: ‘P Mazell Sculp. THE RED WOODPECKER’

    Written in the associated text: ‘It is called by the Malayans [or Malays], Tockan, or the Carpenter, a name they give to woodpeckers in general, from the noise these birds make in boring trees, which resembles that made by a workman.’

    Plate 6 from Thomas Pennant’s Indian Zoology (London, 1790), printed by Henry Hughs for Robert Faulder.

    Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), British naturalist, traveller, and writer, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767. Best known for his published accounts of tours throughout the British Isles. He never travelled outside of Europe and his account of Indian Zoology was gleamed from drawings brought back by Joan Gideon Loten (1710-1789), a servant in the colonies of the Dutch East India Company and 29th Governor of Sri Lanka, then Ceylon.
    Related fellows
    Thomas Pennant (1726 - 1798, Welsh) , Naturalist
    Joan Gideon Loten (1710 - 1789) , Colonial administrator
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > Sri Lanka
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