11 February 10

Bird Looking Right

yellow-billed magpie, pen and ink 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.)

Yellow-billed magpie, pen and ink 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.

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17 January 10

Two Long Walks

great egret and common moorhen 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.

cormorant and common merganser 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.

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3 December 09

Board Meeting Owl

Doodles at an Audubon board meeting, pen and ink Now that I’m no longer president of Audubon, I’ve resumed doodling during meetings. It doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention….

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2 December 09

Tricolored Blackbird

Tricolored blackbird, pastel on gessoboard Rick did a beautiful job of framing this…

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23 November 09

Sketchcrawling at the Raptor Center

Sketchcrawl, Raptor Center Great Horned Owl Lots of bird sketches on Saturday during the Sketchcrawl. There were presentations during the Open House of both dead and live raptors, the live ones used to people, so plenty of opportunity to sketch.

Sketchcrawl, Raptor Center Golden Eagle skull I like drawing skulls because it’s a great way to familiarize myself with the way the bill attaches to the head, which I seem to mess up every time I try it. This golden eagle skull is something I drew several times.

Sketchcrawl, Raptor Center American Kestrel All the birds that are used for educational purposes at the Raptor Center are unreleasable, whether or not they have imprinted on humans. The birds that have a chance of being released are never in public view.

Sketchcrawl, Raptor Center Barred owl and kids Study skins are good also for learning bird anatomy but I don’t usually draw birds at quite this angle (barred owl on tray, right)!

Sketchcrawl, redwinged blackbirds After our trip to the Raptor Center and some more sketching downtown, we went out to the Yolo Bypass so I could sketch some blackbirds on tules, part of a study for a drawing I want to do as part of a fundraiser for Yolo Audubon. We caught only fleeting glimpses of tricolored blackbirds but I was interested in seeing how they perch, which the redwings do pretty much the same way.

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14 October 09

Stormbirds

Birds in the first winter storm, pen and ink The remnants of a typhoon have been clobbering us with wind and rain. No birds at all yesterday morning, but then in the afternoon there was a lull, and they came out in numbers. Yellowrumps bathing in the small lake that had collected outside my window, robins, phoebes, and the season’s first junco for me.

Audubon's yellowrump, colored pencil on cardboard Apparently when yellowrumps get wet they show their yellow crown, because they all had one…

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12 October 09

A Trip to Monterey

seabirding, Monterey-Albacore grounds, pen and ink My friend Linda was visiting from Massachusetts this weekend and we went to Monterey to get out on one of the deep-water pelagic trips, the best chance to see murrelets. The trip was spectacular — over 20 Xantus’ murrelets, plus numerous shearwaters of 5 species, 20 black-footed albatross, many marine mammals including fin and Baird’s beaked whales.

seabirding, Monterey-Albacore grounds, pen and ink We also saw several passerines far out from shore. This yellow-rumped warbler landed on the boat, exhausted.

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8 September 09

Back to the Bypass

Birds at the Bypass We went back to the Bypass on Friday evening after a report of a sharp-tailed sandpiper. I keep a fictitious seen-once-only-list and this bird’s on it. No luck, but we did see a snowy plover and had a gorgeous look at the rising full moon. Least sandpipers and white pelicans in the sketch…

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4 August 09

Shorebirds

Shorebirds pen and ink Saturday morning a group of about 20 of us went out to the Yolo Bypass to look at shorebirds. Great looks at lesser and greater yellowlegs side-by-side. We didn’t manage to find any rarities, but saw Western sandpipers in different plumages, leasts, 4 Wilson’s phalaropes, and a white pelican on one of the rice berms…

Apologies for the paucity of posts. Lots else going on, much of which does not make it onto the blogs.

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31 May 09

Birds in Flight on a Sunday

birds in flight

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