
Inscribed at lower right, in pale brown ink, "Dieses Vogel heist auf Indianisch / Coximoyanex er isset Würme, Schlangen s.s. / Die Schlange die um ihn gewunden ist, wird / Rattenfanger genant". A nearly identical inscription appears on the verso, at lower right, in brown ink, "Dieses Vogel heist auf / Indianisch Coximoyanex / er ist Würme, / Schlange, / die Schlange die um ihn ge: / wunden ist, wird Ratten fanger genant / daru. das sie Ratten verschluckt".
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Nineteenth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978-1980. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981, p. 204.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 153.
The inscription on the recto and verso explains that the "worm-eating bird is named Coximoyanex by the Indians" and that the "snake encircling him is called a rat-catcher."
Thorne, Landon K., Jr., Mrs., donor.