Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18623

    White-capped noddy

    Date
    1731
    Creator
    Mark Catesby (1683 - 1749, British) , Naturalist
    Object type
    Library reference
    18894
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 265mm
    width (print): 355mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Zoology
          > Ornithology
    Biology
       > Botany
    Biology
       > Natural history
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > bird
    Description
    Ornithological study of a white-capped noddy, Anous minutus, referred to here as Hirundo marina minor. It is shown in left profile, on a rocky mound in front of an open body of water.

    Signed and inscribed below: ‘Hirundo Marina’

    Written in the associated description: ‘They lay their Eggs on bare Rocks on many of the Bahama Islands, where they breed in company of Boobies. It is pleasant to see them fishing, accompanied with variety of other Sea-Birds in numerous flights, flying on the surface of the water, and continually dropping to snatch up the little fish’.

    Plate 88 from volume I of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).

    Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733.
    Object history
    The Natural History was originally published in 10 parts, intended to be bound in 2 volumes. It was the earliest western scientific description of the flora and fauna of North America, and its copper plates were etched and hand-coloured by Catesby himself.

    Catesby’s trips to North America were funded by a group of sponsors, many of whom were colonial governors, charged with managing the British Empire’s territories, and their support of Catesby’s research can be read as an exercise in colonial control. As The Natural History’s parts were issued it also became important as a reference text to naturalists attempting to order the natural world according to the ambitious taxonomic systems that characterized the mid-18th century.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > North America
          > United States
    <The World>
       > North America
          > Bahamas
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