Two non-joining fragments of lip, bowl, and floor. Glaze abraded slightly on outside at rim. Max. dim. a) 0.14, b) 0.035; est. diam. at rim 0.15; diam. of tondo 0.117. R. Lamberton and S. Rotroff, Birds of the Athenian Agora (Agora Picture Book 22), Princeton 1985, p. 17, fig. 34 (mispoised).

I, at the right of fragment a, a kestrel hovers, about to swoop down, holding a snake in its beak and claws. At the left in reserve, a few leaves of a tree; below the kestrel and at the far left, marsh plants and ground drawn with very fine incision. At the break near the center is a bit of reserve, probably part of the tree. Fragment b preserves more of the marsh plants, a little of the trunk of the tree, and a reserved line separating the tondo from the glazed exergue. Around the tondo, stopped-maeander pattern with checkerboard-squares. Relief contour. White: snake.

The bit of reserve at the break on fragment a cannot be a human figure because there is no trace of a figure on fragment b, which would be necessary for the composition. It might be part of the trunk, perhaps the stump of a sawn-off branch. A possible parallel appears on the namepiece of the Orchard Painter, New York, M.M.A. 07.286.74 (ARV2 523, 1; Addenda 254).

The finely incised, elegant reeds find their best parallels with those painted on white-ground cups. Cf. two by the Sotades Painter, London, B.M. D 6 (ARV2 763, 1; Paralip. 415, 1; Addenda 286), which shows apple pickers, and London, B.M. D 7 (ARV2 763, 3; Addenda 286), which depicts a huge serpent springing from feathery reeds, hissing and about to attack a man; also, Louvre CA 483 by the Hesiod Painter (ARV2 774, 3; Paralip. 416, 3; Addenda 287), on which a Muse plays a cradle kithara next to a stand of wispy reeds; the reeds behind the seated woman on side B of a bobbin by the Sotheby Painter, Athens, N.M. 2350 (ARV2 775, 3; Addenda 288); and the lekythos in Kansas City, Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum of Art 31.80 by the Eretria Painter (ARV2 1248, 8; Addenda 353; Lezzi-Hafter, Eretria-Maler, p. 344, cat. no. 240, pl. 157:f, g): there, the child Kephalos appears in a garden with goddesses. In red figure, a clump of reeds (reserved, not incised) appears on Munich inv. 8737, a pelike by the Agrigento Painter (ARV2 578, 67), the subject unexplained. Like the scene on 1526, all of these are unusual subjects.

The reeds on these vases are quite different and more finely executed than those on lekythoi by the Reed Painter, who gets his name from the stands of reeds on several of his white-ground lekythoi. See those figured by Kurtz, Athenian White Lekythoi, pls. 46, 47.