Wood Pigeons and Tunnicliffe’s Brooke Bond Bird Portraits

There’s a Wood Pigeon in my local country park. They seem such heavy birds:

Woodpigeon - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

Back home I look Wood Pigeon up in the Brooke Bond album of tea cards called ‘Bird Portraits’ with illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe.

Tunnicliffe's Bird Portraits - The Hall of Einar

Many things have changed since the original tea cards were given away over 60 years ago in packs of Brooke Bond Tea: paper and printing technology have changed massively, our knowledge of the science of birds has expanded as had our understanding of how man-made climate change is impacting on them.

Woodpigeon - The Hall of Einar - Tunnicliffe

One thing has remained unchanged, however, and that is that Charles Tunnicliffe’s illustrations are still the greatest.

Forty years ago I saw Wood Pigeons and wrote about them in my childhood nature notebooks:

Woodpigeon – forty years ago in my nature notebooks

Here are some of my previous Wood Pigeon portraits. I’m fascinated by their egg-shaped irises:

Columba palumbus

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