Man feels himself an infinity above those creatures who stand, zoologically, only one step below him, but every human being looks up to the birds.  They seem to us like emissaries of another world which exists about us and above us, but into which, earth-bound, we cannot penetrate.

-Donald Culross Peattie - 

The series of eighteen framed paper cuts were made for a photographic art fair and conceived as a singular piece of work.  Each bird species is common to the British Isles and the paper came from adult magazines common to the British Isles. 

Photographs from amateur bird watchers were used in combination with photographs of reader's wives and the element of nature surrounding them deliberately left in the works.  They are reminders of cheap taxidermy and the intimately national pastime of amateur scientists and looking at tits over a fried breakfast whilst reading the news.

Furthermore, British Birds, examines the relationship to class and leisure in the UK.  The early amateurs were of the gentleman or noble classes who could afford the leisure time and wished to display their knowledge; either through shooting and preserving their spoils or through buying ready-mades from the massive taxidermy market.

photo credit: Andy Keat