Critters at a Wedding

Numenius and I were at a wedding in Oregon this weekend. The setting was gorgeous — out in the forest south of Corvallis, in the Alsea Thyme Garden. Western tanagers and Swainson’s thrushes were singing during the ceremony. I spotted this cedar waxwing beforehand but was unable to see the dipper I was sure was working the creek that ran alongside the garden.

The pond was home to rough-skinned newts, swimming around lazily. And a young garter snake made me very happy. I spotted a raven overhead during the ceremony which seems particularly auspicious since the bride is the bloghoster of Frogs and Ravens. (No frogs, at least not that I heard, but hoping a newt and a garter snake make up for that.)

Pennsylvania Birds

Back from a calligraphy workshop. I failed to identify warbler chips but there were lots of birds I did catch up with, including this grackle.

Delighted in seeing a robin with some green to be in instead of parched brown.

This eastern kingbird was flycatching from a tall stalk.

Notabird, but a fun thing for this westerner to see nonetheless. This woodchuck is apparently living under the shed at Sheila’s.

Trip to the Zoo

Saturday June 5 was World Drawing Day. We took a trip to Sacramento Zoo, a small zoo on a completely manageable scale. It has been such a cool spring but it’s warming up now and we didn’t stay too long. I used only my Derwent Sketching watercolor pencil (Dark Wash, 8B on paper — and worked much larger than I usually do. It was fun and made a change from pen.

I started out around the pool containing waterfowl and the noisy and raucous flamingoes which are being somewhat shielded from the public during breeding season (it didn’t stop a lot of people trying to get them to “do something” loudly, which always gets me more upset than I think it will).

The greater hornbills have been doing well at the zoo, this male having been bred in captivity. I am always astonished at the protruberance on the head and find it difficult to draw to make it look different from the feathers.

Birds in cages: not my ideal, nor theirs. I draw these birds with respect and hope that what is learned about them here can help their populations in the wild.

Jackrabbit and Magpie

I had lunch with a colleague and had a little time after she got on her bike to head back to her office to do a little drawing. There are several grazing jackrabbits and a magpie got in front of this one and looked my way. Trying to get the effect of shady dappled grass is hard…

The Fortuitously Delicious Paper

I recently moved offices, a chance to toss a lot of stuff that had been lying around and not touched for months or even years. One casualty of my zeal was almost a full ream of a metallic black paper whose name I forget entirely along with its provenance but which I sadly concluded was not going to work for anything.

But I retrieved it from the recycle bin, because I just felt so guilty. Good thing, too. It takes prismacolor and, I have just discovered, pastel like a dream. I don’t have a white version of either one of these to hand to test but I think this could lead to some very dramatic drawings. The paper has a very fine tooth which takes these media superbly well. I just wish I could remember the name of it, I’d buy different colors.

At right, a white-tailed kite in Prismacolor (French Gray); below, a starling and jackrabbit in pastel pencil (Cream). Watch this space.

My Birdathon

A bit about how the day went can be found on Feathers of Hope, but here are a few of the sketches from this memorable weekend:

List of birds that made it into the sketchbook:

Wood duck
Mallard
California quail
Great egret
Snowy egret
Cattle egret
Green heron
Turkey vulture
White-tailed kite
Northern harrier
Red-shouldered hawk
Swainson’s hawk
American kestrel
Common moorhen
American coot
California gull
Rock pigeon
Mourning dove
White-throated swift
Anna’s hummingbird
Belted kingfisher
Nuttall’s woodpecker
Downy woodpecker
Black phoebe
Ash-throated flycatcher
Western kingbird
Warbling vireo
Western scrub-jay
Yellow-billed magpie
American crow
Tree swallow
Northern rough-winged swallow
Cliff swallow
Barn swallow
Bushtit (including nest, found in Arboretum in acacia grove)
Bewick’s wren
House wren
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Western bluebird
Northern mockingbird
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Yellow-rumped warbler
Wilson’s warbler
Song sparrow
White-crowned sparrow
Golden-crowned sparrow
Red-winged blackbird
Brewer’s blackbird
Brown-headed cowbird
Bullock’s oriole
House finch
American goldfinch

This can’t be right, because I have counted 52 birds and I know I have 58 (because there are 60 pages and all but the last one is filled). But I have blisters and a ravenous appetite for a burrito, so I will leave you here. Thank you for sponsoring me if you did. Next year, please join me! It was a blast.

Common Eider

Back from Maine. We went out to Pemaquid to sketch; here’s my eider…

Bird Looking Right

Long-time readers of Bird by Bird may have noticed that i try to alternate my bird sketches to the left and right of text. This is mostly to break up visual monotony on my blog page. But I’m also always trying to have the bird facing the text, rather than looking off the page. (I can’t help it. Years of work as a designer make me notice this kind of thing as opposed to being able blithely to ignore it.)

But the problem is this: most of the birds I sketch are facing right. This doesn’t mean that most birds face right; it means that most of the ones I actually sketch are facing right. Studies have shown (and if I were writing a psych paper I’d run out there and fish out some references) that the human brain is far more likely to home in on not just the eyes of something with eyes, but the eyes looking a particular direction. This seems to change with hemispheric domination, and I’m not sure what dictates what, but my hemisphere seems to dictate that I draw birds facing right.

Photoshop to the rescue? Alas. The lower magpie is flipped in photoshop but it looks wrong to me, off, somehow, definitely off-balance. It’s very strange. You should try it.

Two Long Walks

I’ve signed up to do the Big Green Year again, and finally decided on the walking one rather than bike. But for one reason or another we haven’t gone on many long walks in 2010, and I hadn’t started keeping even a decent yard list.

Yesterday we walked west along the levee and Riparian Reserve trails out to the UC Davis airport, about 2.5 miles from home. Species totalled: 44, including a pair of common moorhens. Then, today, we walked in to campus to get the paper, picked up nine more species, and were rewarded with a couple of river otters in the creek. I didn’t sketch them but hope to have another chance.

Board Meeting Owl

Now that I’m no longer president of Audubon, I’ve resumed doodling during meetings. It doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention….