Brown stains in upper part and also at lower left, upper left corner damaged, and a piece of paper torn off bottom left. Watermark undecipherable.

The artist has used both sides of a large sheet for studies of birds and insects, turning it in various directions. The smaller sketches seem to have been added around the large parrot; the chalk studies also seem to be additions. The pen drawings, rapid sketches made withouth lifting the pen from the paper, are similar to other small sketches by the artist, such as the sheet of sketches in Münich.
According to Vasari, Giovanni decorated the upper parts of the walls of the Sala dei Papagalli with parrots in various colours and other bizarre animals. A Sala di Papagalli seems to have been one of the inner rooms of papal suites since the late midle ages, not only in the Vatican palace. A green parrot with a red band aroung the neck was part of the decorations executed under Nicolaus III. [Bjurström, It. Drawings, cat. no. 456]