The Mockingbird
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The bird illustrated on this page was drawn by John Gould, a noted ornithologist and colleague of Darwin. Gould’s drawing was in turn engraved by his wife, Elizabeth, for publication as a plate in Zoology of the Voyage of the HMS Beagle, a series of zoological descriptions written by experts and edited by Darwin based on specimens he collected on the Beagle voyage.
This bird is now known as Nesomimus trifasciatus, the Floreana Mockingbird. It is critically endangered with fewer than 250 individuals left in the world that are confined to just two small islands in the Galapagos. This and other mockingbird species were very influential in the development of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
