I don’t live far from Amsterdam and have close access to zoological and ornithological book collections that are in the Artis Library and in the Zoological museum of the University of Amsterdam.
Both have old and rare books. I visit these libraries to acquire information about extinct parrot species.
The last time I was at the Artis Library I looked at the two ‘Perroquets’ books of Levaillant.
Francois Levaillant (1753-1824) was a French explorer and ornithologist. In 1805 he published two large books with beautiful colour copper engravings of parrots done by another well known ornithologist of that time, Jacques Barraband.
While looking for something else I came across plates of African grey parrots. They caught my eye because I’m working on an African Grey painting.
Most of Levaillant’s descriptions were from captive birds or stuffed specimens. With every colour plate there is a story and it seems that he lets his own personal view on each bird prevail over extensive scientific research which makes the books special, even curious. Of the African Greys he portrays the ‘normal’ Congo African Grey with
what he calls “three varieties”. The first ‘variety’ is an African Grey with red streaks (in his text he mentiones red streaks but the image shows a lot of red).
The second is what he calls a “Black African Grey”, which looks to me like a Timney.
The third ‘variety’ is a bird with a yellow tail. From his story (all in French ...) I understand that this was a bird of over sixty years old and that it’s red tail changed feather by feather to a yellow tail.
(Image credits: photographed with the kind permission of the Artis Library, University of Amsterdam.)
I have never heard of African Greys with red streaks or of yellow tails.
A result in Google tells me that the yellow tail may be a sign of a health problem.
I was wondering if anyone has any comments on these two ‘varieties’: is or was there an African Grey subspecies with red streaks and can African Greys have yellow tails?
Finally, here is my oil painting of three African Greys, two adults and one immature.
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