Crested Serpent Eagle - Haematornis undulatus (now Spilornis cheela)

The crested serpent eagle is a medium-sized bird of prey from the tropical regions of Asia. Its genus, Spilornis, is a member of the Circaetinae subfamily, which comprises all of the snake-eagles. As their name suggests, these birds subsist mostly upon snakes and reptiles, and as such most of them live in warmer climates, where serpents are plentiful.

A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains. John Gould (illustration Elizabeth Gould), 1831.

Biddulph's Ground Jay.

Tits: Great Tit, Sultan Tit, Elegant Tit, Yellow-Cheeked Tit, Black-Crested Tit, Grey-Crested Tit, Red-Capped Tit, Varied Tit

Early on in the blog, some anon messaged me "tits or gtfo". I assume this is what they meant.

It's a bird sort of day.

You call it lazy, I call it a celebration of the inspirational husband/wife team of John and Elizabeth Gould.

Even though Elizabeth died before her husband did his work on mammals and before his works were mentioned by Darwin, she was a major part of John Gould's observations and research. Over 600 of the lithographs in John Gould's work were Elizabeth's art, including the newly-classified (by her husband) finches that Charles Darwin gave to the Goulds for classification input, and later used to both develop his theory of natural selection and illustrate his concepts in On the Origin of Species. Even though John Gould is mentioned as a direct influence by Darwin and Elizabeth was not (subsequently allowing her work to be almost completely eclipsed by her husband's), his wife's work was still important, lovely, and generated a lot of public interest in birds both domestic and foreign.

Edward Lear did the mammalian lithographs and a few bird lithographs (the post-1841 works), but all of the pre-1841 birds (the majority of them) were Elizabeth's work.

So yeah. Birds today. And keep Elizabeth's hard and skilled work in mind. She did all this in the middle of taking care of 8 children (she had no nanny while in Australia with her 4 oldest children, who were quite young at the time). She was one awesome possum.

John Gould, 1840

Elizabeth Gould with Australian cockatiel, memorial oil painting, produced shortly after her death