A SELECTION of beautiful Victorian lithographic prints depicting exotic birds is expected to fetch more than £30,000 when it goes under the hammer in Swindon.

The five books of 320 images entitled Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands were produced by renowned natural history artist John Gould between 1875 and 1880.

Such is Gould's reputation for drawing rare and exotic birds that 120 years after his death he is still known by wildlife art enthusiasts as the bird man.

Nathan Winter, from Dominic Winter Book Auctions, said that news of the sale has created quite a stir amongst the collecting community.

"We're expecting it to fetch between £20,000 and £30,000 but I've a suspicion it will go for a lot more. There's quite a lot of interest being generated by it," he said.

He said that a collection such as this only goes up for sale about once every five years anywhere in the world. Interested buyers are expected to come from across Britain as well as Europe, America and the Far East.

The 19th century was the heyday of lithographic printing a process by which images are etched onto a chalky limestone block and then printed on to paper. Gould's drawings were then hand-coloured by craftsmen.

Gould's sketches would have been produced from dead specimens of the birds. The Victorian craze for natural history, exploration and collecting, usually involved bringing back skins of rare and exotic animals to be stuffed.

John Gould, who was born in Dorset in 1804, produced 2,999 painstaking illustrations of birds from around the world over a 50-year career. The prints were originally reproduced in a series of books which would have been sent to out to only a few hundred enthusiastic, well-heeled, subscribers.

The owner of this particular collection, Gould's last, hails from Australia but chose Swindon auction house of Dominic Winter because its reputation as a book specialist.

Nathan Winter said: "Increasingly people are recognising us as a leader in this sort of market."

Next Wednesday's sale starts at noon in the Maxwell Street auction rooms. The prints are being sold individually and are expected to start from around £100.