THE naturalist Sir David Attenborough has been trawling through the Queen’s collection of paintings to put together an exhibition of some of the first wildlife studies.

The paintings are from the Age of Discovery when naturalists sailed the world to explore newly discovered lands and unearthed tens of thousands of species of animals and plants.


Many are the first-known images of newly discovered plants and animals and were the means by which previously unknown species were introduced to the public in Britain and Europe.

They come from an era when wildlife was first studied in detail and include species, such as the passenger pigeon, that have become extinct.