Phaethon aethereus
This 18th Century watercolour of the Red-Billed Tropicbird is the work of Charles Collins, one of the most accomplished bird painters working in Britain in the first half of the 1700s. It belongs to the Taylor White Collection, an extensive body of natural history studies assembled by the lawyer and naturalist Taylor White and now held by McGill University Library.
Collins painted from specimens rather than from life, and the Red-Billed Tropicbird would have reached him as a preserved skin brought back from a voyage to tropical waters. What distinguishes his work is how little that shows. The bird is given a poised, upright presence, its plumage rendered with the fine, controlled brushwork that characterises the finest natural history painting of the period, at a time when accurate depiction was the only means of recording a species for those who would never see one.
The Red-Billed Tropicbird
The Red-Billed Tropicbird, Phaethon aethereus, is a seabird of tropical oceans worldwide, breeding in the Atlantic, the eastern Pacific and the northern Indian Ocean. It is unmistakable: largely white plumage finely barred with black across the back, bold black markings through the eye, a heavy coral-red bill, and a pair of central tail streamers that can nearly double the bird’s apparent length in flight.
These are birds of the open ocean. They come ashore only to breed, spending the rest of the year far from land, feeding on fish and squid taken by plunge-diving from height. Flying fish are a particular staple, and tropicbirds will follow shoals across long distances.
Breeding and Maturity
Red-Billed Tropicbirds nest on cliff ledges and in rock crevices, choosing sites inaccessible to most predators. A single egg is laid, and both adults share incubation and the feeding of the chick, which takes around three months to reach independence. The species matures slowly, acquiring full adult plumage and beginning to breed at roughly four to five years of age.
Courtship is conducted on the wing, in extended aerial displays in which pairs circle and glide together above the colony. During these displays the birds are capable of brief backwards flight, an unusual manoeuvre among seabirds.
The Conservation of The Red-Billed Tropicbird
The Red-Billed Tropicbird is currently classified as of Least Concern, though this global assessment conceals real pressure on individual colonies. Introduced rats and cats take eggs and chicks at breeding sites, and habitat loss, human disturbance and shifting ocean conditions all bear on local populations. The Caribbean and eastern Atlantic colonies are among those most closely monitored.
Collins painted the species some two centuries before any of these threats were recorded, at a point when the tropicbird was known in Britain only through the accounts of sailors and the specimens they carried home.
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.