“Traitté general des oyseaux” was written in 1660 by Jean Baptiste Faultrier, a taxman working in Louis XIV's royal hunting lodge. The 787-page, un-illustrated manuscript was dedicated to the all-powerful Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's superintendent of the finances. Faultrier used an impressive variety of sources, from the natural history treatises of Aldrovandi and Belon, to falconry treatises, Italian bird-keeping manuals, Thevet's travel literature, and husbandry books. Faultrier's work brought together many facets of ornithology, and placed natural history, hunting and bird-keeping on the same level. Although on a par with Jonston's De avibus (1650), Faultrier's “Traitté” was never printed and remained unknown until 2004. Analysis of the content reveals how Faultrier worked and his aim in writing such a manuscript, which is one of the only ornithology works of seventeenth-century France.
