Within the days when color printing was extraordinarily costly, the Avicultural Society had particular appeals for funds to help the looks in Avicultural Journal of the occasional color plate. A well known fowl artist was then commissioned. Though the entire run of the Society’s magazines may be discovered on-line, the plates not often see the sunshine of day. Subsequently I made a decision to point out one, from time to time, on this web site.
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This plate from the November-December 1956 difficulty is Vieillot’s Crested Fireback, a pheasant, additionally now generally known as the Malay Crested Fireback, from the Thai-Malay Peninsula and most of Sumatra. It has gone from being thought of a subspecies, Lophura ignita rufa, to being cut up off as a full species, Lophura rufa, in 2014. Jean Delacour (1890-1985), the well-known aviculturist and ornithologist, supplied a brief account of the birds to accompany the color plate. It’s present in lowland forest however now classed as ‘susceptible’ due to the lack of habitat.
The plate was the work David Morrison Reid Henry (1919-1977) in 1955. He signed his work as D.M. Henry and was an artist favoured by the Avicultural Society for the plates printed on this interval.