A Graceful Early 20thC Taxidermy Buzzard Perched On A Log

Origin: English
Period: Late Nineteenth / Early Twentieth Century
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1900-20
Depth: 8 inches (at maximum)
Width: 6 inches (at maximum)
Height: 19 inches (the whole)

Master Fisk, a retired architect lived alone in a fine former castle in Berwick-Upon-Tweed in Northumberland. After realising he was going to be lonely without company in such a large castle he set about populating the building and grounds with a menagerie of animals and in tandem with his gun dogs he kept a tame buzzard named Maude who he kept in the top of the tower, to watch over the property, for buzzards are very territorial.

Maude when not circling the grounds, for she had a penchant for blue tits, was to be found in the south facing window crevice perched on a log, or failing that, trying to mate with one of Fisks’ teddy bears, for she slept on an old toy box. Fisk became very fond of Maude over the fourteen long years she spent with him and as she had such maternal instincts it was like having his old dear around the place. A little on the lazy side, her plaintive mewing call could be mistaken for his cat Buttons.

Fisk immortalised all of his animals by employing the services of a good taxidermist in the town, and it is his work we present to you today, Maude, well preserved though with some hair drop to the back of her head, sits calmy, as she once did, on her log, now with plinth…still looking for blue tits….