Taxidermy: A Late Victorian Oval Wall Domed Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus), circa 1880-1900, a full mount adult male, perched upon a small branch above ferns and grasses, set against a pale blue painted back drop, enclosed within an oval wall hanging domed glass display case with ebonised frame, 23.5cm by 29cm.
A very small cirl bunting population exists in South Devon, near the small town of Kingsbridge where the pioneering ornithologist George Montagu discovered the species, as he recorded in his book, the Ornithological Dictionary, 1802. The species appears to have first colonised Britain near Kingsbridge, most likely not long before Montagu described it. It expanded from there across southern England in the nineteenth century. It retreated from the 1930s onwards, so that by 1989 the population again survived mainly near Kingsbridge. Since then, conservation efforts have increased the population more than fivefold, but it remains almost wholly in Devon.