Portraits of Rare and Curious Birds,

A copy of 'one of the most famous, early coloured illustrations of ornithology' (Wood).

In the mid-1780's Hayes went to live at Southall, a short walk from Osterley Park. Osterley, remodelled by Robert Adam in the 1760's, was owned by the Childs. Like the Duchess of Portland, Sarah Child was an enthusiastic collector of exotic birds. When Horace Walpole visited Osterley Park in 1773, he admired 'the menagerie full of birds that came from a 1000 islands, which Mr Banks has not yet discovered'. The Childs commissioned Hayes to paint portraits of a number of their live birds, as did John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.

Following the deaths of Montagu and both Robert and Sarah Child, Hayes was left without a patron and in severe financial straits with ten children to support (of the twenty-one he had fathered). He decided to turn the numerous drawings and more than sixty etched plates that he had used for his Rare and Curious Birds Accurately drawn from Specimens in the Menagery at Osterley Park, into a larger work, which he dedicated to Thomas Pennant, and sold on a subscription basis.

The birds Hayes chose to depict, demonstrate the taste for the exotic prevailing at the end of the eighteenth century, a taste fuelled by news of recent discoveries.
This work on the Birds of Osterley was illustrated from drawings by Hayes and his family and was thought to be coloured by them.