Edward Lear is best known for his nonsense verse, but he was also an accomplished artist. At the age of 19 he was keen to establish himself as a painter of natural history and published Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots, a collection of 42 hand-coloured lithographic plates, including one of a red and yellow macaw (above). These were greeted with great enthusiasm and compared to the work of John James Audubon. This rare collection of ornithological plates has now been published in PDF format by Octavo (http://www.octavo.com).