Cedar Waxwing

I had no blue pencil in the car when I went to Kinko’s. But I did have a pen and a sketchbook. Waxwings gobbling berries, like they do.

American Goldfinch Again

Birds hanging upside-down: now, I dare. It’s easier when you think of it in terms of body masses and where they end up in relation to each other, where the center of gravity now is.

Jack’s tips on how to draw birds in flight have had me seeing birds flying over today with completely new eyes. Crows, magpies, mockingbirds: I feel like I’m seeing them all for the first time. There may be more than a bird a day for a while…

And then there’s this, for those wanting to study wings really closely… or this for anyone wanting to see the only bird whose bill is longer than its body.

American Goldfinch

After 24 hours of rain, we have a beautiful sunny day that will get cooler. The birds have been in puddles and feeding busily, including the American goldfinches in the star-thistle outside my window. They move a lot but I was able to catch this one before it flew off.

Peregrine Falcon, Still There

The female peregrine was still sitting in her spot on the UC Davis water tower when we went to pick up the paper yesterday — sketched her from the other side this time. It was overcast which made it a lot easier to pick out feather details.

Burrowing Owl

I went over to the Raptor Center this morning before a hike. I wanted to get some sketches of one of the two burrowing owls that are there. Burrowing owls are losing a lot of their habitat here to development and agriculture (and to ag-extirpation of ground squirrels, whose burrows they purloin).

This owl’s name is Hobbit; he’s missing his right wing, so he spends all his time on the ground. This morning we had a heavy frost and he had found a spot in the sun, where he stayed for some time, apparently happy with the distance I had chosen (thank goodness for the monocular; all the sketches shown here were done through it).

I tried doing all the head movements again, bearing in mind that owls can, and do (and this one did) turn their head 180°. Then I tried a colored-pencil sketch, which was going well until two volunteers walked past with a Swainson’s hawk on jesses and Hobbit got spooked…

The Morning Crowd

The bustle of activity that congregates just outside my window at around nine and the disperses within about twenty minutes or so involves quite a few species. Today I saw northern flicker, Nuttall’s woodpecker, western bluebird, European starling, American goldfinch, yellowrumped warbler, northern mockingbird, and dark-eyed junco.

And then they all left.

Zoo

This is my submission for Illustration Friday’s theme, Zoo.

I went to the zoo again yesterday for a meeting, but my coworkers were happy enough to wander around for a few minutes. I drew more flamingos. This is my first attempt at scanning a sketch and coloring it digitally in Illustrator (as opposed to Photoshop). Flamingos are so iconic and they lend themselves to a flat, graphic style.

White Pelicans

White pelicans wheel
over campus at lunchtime:
into the sun

European Starling

The bluebirds outside my window were making a commotion this morning. Here’s why: a starling had started to investigate the cavity in the utility pole they’ve been working on for weeks.

This got me more agitated than I care to admit. I opened the door and scared away the bird. It returned with another starling…

Peregrine Falcon

There had been a report of a female peregrine falcon sitting on one of the UC Davis water towers over the past couple of days. I headed over there on my bike on the way home from lunch today. Sure enough, there she was, preening.

I pedalled home to get my new scope and spent close to an hour, doing about 20 sketches. Most of them are miserable: I feel as far away as ever from mastering raptor bills, though I’m determined to keep practicing — but I’m posting quite a few to give a sense of how the bird moved “in place” — preening, looking, keeping an eye out for prey and anything else.

I’m also becoming less worried about how bad the drawings are and more able to be grateful just sitting in the presence of something so awesome. It’s sometimes easy to forget that peregrines were almost wiped out by pesticides thirty years ago. We saw one yesterday in Inverness on Point Reyes. Seeing one again today seems unbelievable. Seeing one for close to an hour so that I could draw it? Fantastic.