The Victorian Obsession with Hummingbirds
The Victorians were - quite literally and without the least exaggeration - absolutely besotted with hummingbirds. Not only did the number of known species proliferate over the nineteenth century - from 18 in 1758 to over a hundred in 1829 - but each new discovery seemed to shimmer more brightly with all the colours of the rainbow or was even smaller or more perfectly formed than all that had been seen in England before. “There is not, it may safely be asserted, in all the varied works of nature in her zoological productions,” William Bullock wrote about hummingbirds in 1824, “any family that can bear a comparison, for singularity of form, splendour of colour, or number and variety of species, with this the smallest of the feathered creation.”
Hummingbirds were frequently arranged on branches and displayed in visually intoxicating hoards like the image[s] above, believed to have been created by Bullock in the mid-nineteenth century. As Judith Pascoe notes, the diminutive size of hummingbirds and their appeal as bijouterie “increased the enthusiasm for and the ease of creating these kinds of conglomerations.” Hoarding accentuated the shimmer and vibrancy of the plumage and created a sort visual ecstasy for those not lucky enough to see the birds alive in the indigenous habitats.
[Image Sources: 1 : 2 : 3 : 4]