Swainson's Hawk

Friday lunchtime sketching outings to the Raptor Center have resumed. I overworked this one. It was looking great while loose. I got carried away. Now it looks overposed and stiff.

One for the hopper.

Bluebird Klatsch

A flock of about seven or eight bluebirds swans in, checks out the hole in the pole, and leaves.

Every day.

Trying to Work Larger

I draw the size I see something, pretty much. So if it’s far away it’s small, if it’s close it’s large.

I am trying very hard to learn how to draw much larger than what I see. (If I master this I might try the other way around, but I have a lot of practice at drawing smaller birds and almost none doing giant ones.)

In this sketch, the bluebird is roughly the size I could see it; the yellowrump was bigger. Not significantly bigger, but we’re working on that….

Savannah Sparrow

Several savannahs in the almond tree at lunch, today. I guess it’s winter…

On the way back to work I saw a great-blue heron standing in the field. The advantages of wandering around with a sketchbook and pen in your pocket…

Crow on the Wire

Sometimes you don’t have time for much…

We are very much hoping to make it to the Central Valley Birding Symposium this Sunday to attend John Muir Laws’ bird sketching workshops…

Barred Owl

The who-cooks-for-you call, faint but unmistakable, interrupted the courting great-horned owls last night while I was trying to sleep… These birds don’t occur here, so it was almost certainly a trick of the wind that wafted the song across the creek from the Raptor Center, where this barred owl has been living for some time.

Barred owls, like their tawny and spotted cousins, have large black eyes with no apparent iris. Although I was able to see a slight reflection in the dark, “bottomless” eye, it’s not what I think of. Looking at this bird for the ten minutes I sketched it was like looking into two inkwells…

White-breasted Nuthatch

A white-breasted nuthatch has joined the supposedly more rare red-breasted around here for the winter. I love watching head down vertical surfaces…

Red-tailed Hawk

I went out to feed my apple core to one of the horses in the paddock at lunchtime. I startled a young red-tail out of a eucalyptus; it flew across the paddock into a mulberry, carrying a large-ish prey item. About five minutes later it flew out of the mulberry: it had almost certainly dropped whatever it was.

A wander over there revealed a barely alive ground squirrel.

Hoping the hawk would return and finish off the job, I came back in. Sure enough, the youngster circled around and perched. It took a while for it to find the squirrel, but in the meantime, I sketched it…

Morphology

Birds spend a lot of the time twisting, moving their head around to look for food or predators. This hyperactive yellowrump was very active below the walnut tree, looking for insects kicked up by the morning sun.

There’s a puddle outside, left over improbably from the rain nearly two weeks ago. It’s attracting a lot of bathers and this robin reminded me of just what a pot belly they have….

A Trip to Maine

I went away last Wednesday to visit family. Not much time to bird (or sketch) but it was fun to see the blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, and white-throated sparrows at my mother’s. It was even more fun to see a snipe flying through downtown Portland, being chased by a gull — I had no time to whip out the sketchbook for that one, though.

My eight-year-old nephew, in addition to a precocious interest in cooking, has started drawing birds. He wants to know what falcon Horus is based on. (I thought probably Peregrine, but who knows? If you have an idea, please leave it in the comments…) Here is his Horus-falcon along with an armadillo and rattlesnake. I think he’s hankering for the deserts; they got a lot of rain in Maine this summer.