Mark Catesby’s Exploration of
South Carolina’s Coastal Waterways
I
By Sylvia W. Bacon
magine seeing paintings of waterfowl and plants
Top: Green Heron
“Green Bittern”
(Butorides virescens)
Perched on Carolina
ash, Vol. I. Plate 80.
Left: His Little Blue
Heron (Egretta
caerulea) has a similar
background. Vol I.
Plate 76.
Bottom: Bald
Eagle (Haliaeetus
leucocephalus) and
Gray Mullet (Mugil
cephalus). Vol I.
Plate 1.
48
of subjects on Kiawah Island and the surrounding
areas created 300 years ago and realizing these
images look much like the flora and fauna we see
here today. It is even more interesting to learn that these
works were by an English gentleman named Mark Catesby,
who explored the South Carolina coastline from Sullivan’s
Island to Edisto in the early 1720s.
According to written documentation, Mark Catesby was
the first person to document dolphin strand feeding along
the South Carolina coastline. Unfortunately, he did not
make sketches of this activity, but he wrote about seeing
dolphins pursuing fish, eating them as they jumped out of
the water while voracious birds grabbed the fish from the air.
His account is recorded in The Natural History of Carolina,
Florida, and the Bahama Islands, Volume I, page vii.
Mark Catesby was an artist and naturalist who first came to
North America in 1722 at the age of 40. He loved what he saw
here and felt driven to explore this wildness, sketching and
making notes as he traveled. During his two trips to North
America, he scouted much of the area from Virginia to
the Bahamas.
Some years after his first visit, Catesby made engravings
from his sketches and published The Natural History of
Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, Volumes I and II
(1729–1732). According to The Virginia Museum of History
and Culture, “This monumental two-volume set is considered
to be one of the most important achievements of eighteenth-
century natural science.
Although he was not a trained artist, Catesby’s drawings
and descriptions, especially of birds, were so detailed and
vibrant that today he is known as “the founder of American
ornithology.” His reputation has grown in recent years, and
today his engravings are highly prized by collectors. Catesby
spent over 20 years on The Natural History project working
on it until his death in 1749. He was considered a pioneer in
the field of scientific illustration.”
Many well known men of the time respected Catesby’s
work and often relied on his findings. Records show
that Lewis and Clark consulted him before making their
exploration toward the Pacific. He also influenced renowned
Naturally Kiawah