Remedial Bills I: Sacramento Zoo

If you have to do remedial bird sketching, the zoo’s a good place. You can get very close to the birds and they’re used to people, so it’s a good way to scrutinize them at length. We spent a couple of hours this morning at the Sacramento Zoo.

The disadvantage is that zoos tend to have outlandish, outrageous birds, the kind that appeal to people whose main interest is really not birds but who like bright colors and weird bird shapes. So the bills aren’t really representative of what I’m mostly going to be working on.

It’s okay, though. By far the most interesting thing I learned today was that the point where a bird’s mouth opens is way behind, sometimes by a huge amount, the part of the bill that’s visible. There’s connective tissue and ceres and feathers and all kinds of other things going on — the bill is part of the skeleton and protrudes through all the soft stuff. Where, and at what angle, is key to drawing the bird at all accurately.

Worth the $9 admission, the 100 degree heat, and the kids screaming for ice cream, that was. The penguins were moulting and were safely behind glass in what I assume was climate-controlled coolth…

Little Green Heron

As I was sketching this green heron at the UC Davis Arboretum we spotted a kitten under a Mercedes and spent the next hour and a half trying to extricate it (without success). This watercolor is done from a pen and ink sketch, colors from memory, as we waited for the kitten to emerge from the car wheels for a can of catfood (thanks Fernanda). Hoping it will come out of its own accord tonight…

Common Moorhen

It’s been a week since I’ve started doing this, and what I’ve learned pretty quickly is that I need urgent remedial work on bills. All bills. This juvenile moorhen was sketched in full noon backlight but I redid the sketch because the bill made it look like a pied-billed grebe. It’s still not right.

My friend Joe gave me an excellent book a while ago on drawing birds — I’m going to dig it out and see what it says about bills and beaks. I’m not going to be able to fudge them any more! Not if I have one a day to do…

(Remember that tomorrow is International Rock-Flipping Day. Not that there are many birds to be found under rocks, but look under your best rock and let us know what you find!)

Mourning Dove

Dove hunting season starts tomorrow, so I may not get a chance to see mourning doves for a while. I’m always astonished at a) how pink they are; b) how very tiny their heads are.

Swainson's Hawk

At work, downward brown:
A young hawk pins a young squirrel.
The Swainson’s hawk wins.

(Drawn VERY fast — the hawk stayed maybe 30 seconds before dragging the squirrel to the right then flying up onto the wire. This is the advantage of having sketching material to hand by the window…)

Wild Turkey

The wild turkeys make an appearance every morning, early, and again before sunset. Their predictability — not to mention their size — makes them a good subject for sketching. My previous efforts to discourage them with frisbees have made them wary, though.

I have many pages of sketches of these birds, and in fact started this color one yesterday. I’m thinking this may be the way to do this daily thing — start on several species and add to each sketch as I see the birds again. It’s been very hot here and there hasn’t been much bird action during the day!

Western Scrub-jay

A family group of scrub-jays flew into the almond tree this morning. I got a few quick sketches done but waited till this afternoon before redoing one with color (I wanted to check the color in the facial markings and there, ready as always, was Google Images).

I don’t like to work from photographs — your work can seem really “wooden” — but they do provide excellent reference material for color and shape when you aren’t sure about something. Study skins in museums are great too. Taxidermied specimens are less good because you’re really working on someone else’s art, but sometimes, as in the case of the Labrador ducks at the Museum of Natural History, that’s all there is…

Birds in Flight I: American Crow

It’s hard to draw birds while they’re flying: there’s the problem, usually, of foreshortening, and you have to get the relative angle of the wings to the body right, and worst of all, the birds are on the move, so you don’t get very long to resolve the first two issues.

A bird I see a lot is the American crow. We live on the edge of a field where they feed; we live on the flight path to and from their roost site in Davis; I see them often from my window at work. A challenge is always to get the correct amount of tapering in the wing as it joins the body, the slightly spread primaries. The “hunchback” look of a crow as it flies.

Last night while we were at a baseball game a partial albinistic crow flew over. The tips of the wings were sliver, making it look a bit like a jackdaw gone wrong. I sketched it quickly in ballpoint on the scorecard I was using, but missed the opportunity to sketch a huge flyover of crows on their way to roost…

Long-billed dowitcher

Back to the Bypass today, since it’s probably my last shot for the week. Lots of birders still trying to come up with the glossy ibis without success.

I usually do a lot of fast sketches before starting in on a slower color drawing. But the color ones are rare, for when there’s more time at the weekend. I’m going to start working on a small, portable color system to have with me at all times.

White-faced Ibis

Welcome to Bird by Bird, a blog started in August 2007 as I approach 700 birds seen in the ABA area (North America including Canada and Alaska, excluding Hawaii) and which has me at a crossroads. It’s expensive and environmentally irresponsible to gad about the country adding birds to my list. (I have neither unlimited time nor unlimited funds for this kind of activity, and at this point the price per bird goes way up.)

Some birders at this point in their list settle into county listing, or state listing (easier if you live in a small state). Others start photographing birds, building their list back up with a photo of each species they had previously seen. (Some keep on going, chasing 750 and even 775; I will never be one of them.)

Me, I’m going to start sketching. A bird a day. Bird by bird, like Annie Lamott says.

Sketching birds makes you look at the bird hard. If you look hard enough, it makes the bird part of your psyche. This takes your head to a different place, one that is unfettered by obligations. I’m not particularly good, but I hope to get better. You do it enough, it gets easier. You see more.

Today’s bird is a white-faced ibis, sketched at the Yolo Bypass. It was getting hot. There were birders around because a glossy ibis — an eastern vagrant — had been reported that morning. I found myself smiling that I was content to study the white-faced ibises rather than worry that I couldn’t see the glossy. This is my introduction to a new quest: not a new bird, each time, but a sketch. The bird in front of me, not the one that got away…

I hope to produce one of these for Bird by Bird every day, though they won’t always be new birds. We are seeing a lot of the turkeys from our kitchen window, for example. But my efforts are now shifting away from chasing to recording…