The Barber Institute (Art Gallery) has a great exhibition on Parrots in Fine Art until April. Highly recommended.
Buzz is a good magazine from Birmingham University. I recommend the article above which appears on the back page of the January issue and is writted by a celebrated academic. Click on the image and it should then be readable! (sometimes it works some times not.)
Back issues can be found at http://www.buzz.bham.ac.uk/
There is something faintly amusing about the way that the parrot’s eye and nose are on the same level as Lady Cockburn’s, with the bird and lady turned in opposite directions.
I’d like to think that he stuffed the parrots into paintings of patrons with “bird” names, like Cockburn, but no doubt that is quite wrong!
I will ask “She who must be obeyed 3” if she dosen’t answer automatically!
I wonder if they pronounced the name “Coburn” as in the Port (drink) as we do now? Nothing is straight forward in the English language!