While the bill is reminiscent of the Long-billed Spiderhunter, that is a
biggish bird. The Little Spiderhunter has a shortish bill.
Some of the hermits have long curved beaks and my personal sugestion is the
Red-billed Streamer-tail (locally know as the Doctorbird), which is the
national bird of Jamaica and decorates Air Jamaica plane tails, (see
http://experts.about.com/e/a/ai/Air_Jamaica.htm ) is more the right size. It
is a hummingbird of course and notice the long tail streamers.
I suspect that it is more likely the Brett Whitley saw an Air Jamaica plane
than he saw a Spiderhunter as Spiderhunters are birds of forests - although
I recently saw some Littles just over the central kiosk in Singapore Botanic
Gardens (a great place to have breakfast).
Brett Whitely travelled widely (see
http://www.artquotes.net/masters/whiteley_biography.htm ) but seems to have
avoided the range of any Spiderhunter.
So on balance I would assume that it is a hummingbird and he was not
stringing - there are about 350 species of them and it may be a stylised one
anyway.,
Tim Murphy
PS. Thanks for a fascinating question.
-----Original Message-----
From:
Behalf Of Carl Clifford
Sent: Tuesday, 29 August 2006 4:37 PM
To: bird (E-mail)
Subject: Brett Whiteley as a Birder
Dear all,
I have been looking at images of Brett Whiteleys painting
"Hummingbird with Frangipani which has just sold for $2.04 Million,
over the last few days and I am a bit confused, more than usual
actually. The "Hummingbird" depicted, to me seems to be more like a
Sunbird or Spiderhunter. I would be interested in what any other
members of the group think.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
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