Crow in the Almond

The wind was awful yesterday. This morning was completely calm, and we’re about to head into a week of high temperatures. (I’m relieved for my planting plans, because I finally got the bed finished for the root vegetables and they’ll be glad the soil’s warmer.)

This crow was sitting in the top of the almond tree, passing comment on what was happening around and below. Loudly.

Yellow-billed Magpie

Lots of corvid activity in the newly-mown alfalfa, close to the house. This magpie kept landing and taking off into the fierce north wind…

Birds in Flight: White-tailed Kite

Caught two kites hovering over our alfalfa field on Saturday morning. Their body position is almost vertical, with their beautifully-marked long wings gracefully keeping them stationary. I want to do a lot more kties in flight. It’s getting to be a good time of year for that.

Northern Mockingbird

There’s been a mockingbird outside my window at work. I’ve sketched it quickly several times, never quite getting it right. At left is this morning’s effort. The bill, the bill, the bill.

At right is my slower drawing of two individuals from the wildlife museum at lunch today. Upside-down… but good again to have the time. Numenius joined me today and drew a dog shark and a hooded oriole, both of which were out on display for the class that was coming in or had just left…

Mourning Dove

Last night Yolo Audubon Society hosted a talk by the young and very energetic John (Jack) Muir Laws, author and artist (and designer and publicist and apparent distributor) of the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada.

Jack brought along a lot of the original plates for the book, whose main virtue is that it draws together just about anything you might see in the Sierra into one place which is easily back-packable. Of course I was very interested to see his bird drawings; how much more fun that I got to sit next to him at dinner beforehand and shyly show him my bird sketchbook after I told him about Bird by Bird.

He was quite opposed to the idea of using a video camera. Get out and draw the birds, he said, just get out there. We waxed enthusiastic about learning to see again, to find beauty in every bird (he’s particularly fond of female house sparrows). Ask birders what a rock pigeon’s tail looks like, he said. They don’t know, though they can rattle off the minute differences between a Hammond’s and a dusky flycatcher. Why? They don’t SEE it. It gets written off. Dismissed as irrelevant…

Not a rock pigeon, but a mourning dove, above, drawn this morning as it sat on a wire looking down on me. No camera. Just the bird, the pen, and me.

Western Bluebirds

When I spoke with Keith Hansen back in August about tools for sketching birds, he raved about the digital video camera. His point was that you could take footage of the bird and then stop it at the point the bird was doing exactly what you wanted. Keith does a lot of multi-species compositions and getting the right angle on each bird is very important for this kind of work.

I’ve been pondering his approach. I don’t want to draw from photographs, which is essentially what this would be, but it’s fascinating to see exactly what happens when a bird raises its wings then pushes down with them, or when it flies “backwards” as it’s landing, as these bluebirds were doing yesterday.

I’m still thinking about whether such a tool would be helpful for me, or more helpful than other tools, but I did get some footage yesterday just on the digital camera. The resolution was terrible but that was almost a plus, in that I wasn’t focusing on detail but rather on the complex structure of the bird in flight and the sequence… there were about five bluebirds, joined by about 20 yellowrumps, a mockingbird, two or three scrub-jays, and a couple of flickers…

White-crowned Sparrow

The sound of winter: white-crowned sparrow song under the oleanders outside, interspersed with the sound off leaves being scratched out of the way. Oleanders must not be toxic to birds…

Snowy Egret

After yesterday’s rain, it’s clear and gorgeous today, perfect gardening weather. I pulled some weeds this morning, raked over the squash bed for a cover crop, and then Numenius and I rode our bikes in to Mariachi for lunch.

On the way back through the Arboretum I spotted three snowy egrets on the bank, preening, showing their beautiful plumes here and there. I noticed one kept shaking its tongue; a couple of feathers were stuck in its bill and it seemed to be having a hard time dislodging them.

Island Scrub-Jay

When my boss sent me a photo of a banded Island Scrub-jay this morning, I decided to look for one at the Wildlife Museum and draw it instead of the raven I’d been planning on.

This jay was in a tray with three Western scrub-jays. It dwarfed them. It was also intensely deep blue, more a purple-blue than a more yellow-blue. I had hoped to draw both. I ran out of time.

I’m going to have to plan my museum trips a little better so I waste no time when I get there…

Say's Phoebe

The Say’s phoebe is back! It was preening in our almond tree at lunchtime, all fluffed up and squirming, like it was getting rid of ants or lice or something. We had a good amount of rain last night…

Also some poorly-seen sparrows, which may have been lark sparrows. I’ll try and get a better look at them later…