Antonio Valli da Todi

Antonio Valli da Todi (fl. 1600) was an Italian fowler and writer noted for the book Il Canto degl'Augelli (Italian, 'The song of the birds'), (1601).

Title page of Il Canto degl'Augelli (1601)

The book deals with the capture, maintenance, and training of about sixty species of song birds. It also includes notes on methods for trapping and hunting birds, including the use of decoys, nets, owls, and falcons. It also included methods to maintain birds and to stimulate them to sing.

The book included illustrations by Antonio Tempesta Valli's achievements included the recognition and understanding of bird song and the maintenance of territory.[1] He noted that the territory of a singing nightingale was “un tiro di sasso lontano dove canta” - about a circle as wide as a long throw of a stone.[2]

Valli's book served as a source for several other Italian works on birds.[3] This includes Giovanni Pietro Olina;s 1622 work Uccelliera, which plagiarised considerable portions of Valli's book and achieved greater popularity.

  • Playing music to teach songbirds
  • Driving birds into nets
  • Cage bird "dressage"

References
  1. Baldaccini, N.E. (2017). "Antonio Valli ovvero "date a Cesare ciò che è di Cesare"" (PDF). Atti Soc. Tosc. Sci. Nat., Mem., Serie B. 124: 5–8. doi:10.2424/ASTSN.M.2017.01.
  2. Birkhead, T. R (2013). "Nicolas Venette's Traité du rossignol(1697) and the discovery of migratory restlessness". Archives of Natural History. 40: 125–138. doi:10.3366/anh.2013.0142.
  3. Charmantier I. (2011). "L'ornithologie entre Renaissance et Lumières : le Traitté general des oyseaux de Jean B. Faultrier (1660)" (PDF). Anthropozoologica. 46 (1): 7–25. doi:10.5252/az2011n1a1.
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