Numida meleagris
Charles Collins painted this study of a Guinea Fowl in August 1743, towards the end of a career spent recording birds with unusual precision. The watercolour belongs to the Taylor White Collection, a body of 18th Century natural history painting assembled by the lawyer and naturalist Taylor White, whose commissioned works form one of the most complete records of ornithological illustration of the period.
About The Guinea Fowl
The Guinea Fowl, known scientifically as Numida meleagris, is among the most recognisable of ground-dwelling birds. Its plumage is a dense slate grey scattered with fine white spots, no two birds carrying quite the same pattern. The head is small and largely bare, topped by a bony casque that gives the species its distinctive silhouette, and the bill and legs are heavy in proportion to the body. Adult birds range from roughly 40 to 71 centimetres in length and weigh between 1.25 and 1.75 kilogrammes, built for a life spent walking and foraging rather than flying.
The species originates in sub-Saharan Africa, where it occupies savanna, scrub and open woodland. Domestication carried it far beyond that range, and it is now a familiar sight in farmyards and on the margins of settlements across much of the world. Guinea Fowl are highly social, moving in flocks that have earned the collective noun “confusion”, and they keep in contact through a loud, insistent repertoire of calls that has long made them useful as sentinel birds. They are also efficient foragers, consuming ticks, insects and other invertebrates in quantities that make them genuinely valuable to the land they occupy.
Guinea Fowl Breeding and Lifespan
Guinea Fowl pair for life. A hen may lay a large clutch over the course of a breeding season, incubating for around twenty-six to twenty-eight days. The chicks, called keets, are precocial and able to follow the flock and feed themselves within hours of hatching. Wild birds commonly live for around a decade, and those kept in captivity somewhat longer. Hens are known on occasion to accept and raise chicks not their own, including those of other species.
Collins worked at a moment when natural history illustration was shifting from decorative convention towards careful observation, and his handling of the Guinea Fowl reflects that change. The spotted plumage is described patiently rather than suggested, and the bird is given the weight and stance of a living animal rather than a specimen. Painted in August 1743, the study is part of a wider 18th Century project to record the natural world with accuracy, and it remains legible as both a scientific document and a piece of drawing of real quality.
c.1680 - 1744
Charles Collins (c.1680-1744) was a painter of birds, mammals and still life, born in Dublin and trained in Ireland before establishing himself in London. He built his early reputation on still-life subjects, including a series of fruit studies for Robert Furber's Twelve Months of Fruit (1732), before turning increasingly to natural history illustration. From 1736, Collins worked alongside Peter Paillou to produce watercolours of British birds and mammals for the naturalist and collector Taylor White, contributing over 200 signed works to White's collection. His animal studies are noted for their lifelike composition, typically set against a grassy mound or tree stump rather than a plain background, and for the accuracy with which plumage and colouring were recorded from live or preserved specimens. Collins died in London in 1744, described at the time as Bird Painter to the Royal Society.
Credit: Taylor White Collection, Rare Books & Special Collections, McGill University Library.