AvesInArt Challenge January 6!

I had the good fortune during my morning drive to see a Bald Eagle fly directly over the highway in front of me. This majestic beast of a raptor flapped slowly away beneath a sky gray with snow clouds.

BALD EAGLE, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, Wethersfield, CT. January 6, 2015.
Ink wash, white gouache, sharpie marker

This afternoon Jorge revisited the only place in town with birds - the manure piles on campus. With snow already falling, this little snowbird (who you've already met) made an appearance.

DARK-EYED JUNCO, Junco hyemalis. Storrs, CT. January 6, 2015.

 

Challenge Day 5

Challenge -- today it was a challenge to even FIND a bird! The temperature fell and the wind rose and everything was hiding.  Late in the afternoon Jorge found a flock of starlings near a manure pile behind some barns.

European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), Horsebarn Hill, Storrs, CT, USA

I occasionally see brown creepers during lunchtime birding at my workplace, no such luck today, but I sketched their white pine trunk and added the birds from memory. They fly to the base of a tree and creep upwards, searching bark crevices for dormant insects.

Brown Creeper (Certhia americana), Hamden, CT, USA. Pencil, white gouache, sharpie marker

AvesInArt January Challenge, Day 4

A gray day, with rain and fog. I was in Killingly, Connecticut, counting birds on a local Christmas Bird Count - and finding very few, but the highlight was certainly a male Eastern Bluebird. With his back turned toward me, his color was eye-popping in an otherwise drab landscape.

Eastern Bluebird, Sialia sialis. Colored pencil with sharpie marker.

Jorge's bird of the day came from another foggy, gray location. This Red-tailed Hawk was hunting in a cattail marsh on Horsebarn Hill on the campus of the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis, adult.

Challenge Day 3

Today at home we had a dusting of snow, so my bird of the day is the "Snowbird".  The Dark-eyed Junco usually arrives in New England with the first cold weather in October.

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) sharpie marker and ink wash

 Jorge chose another winter visitor for his Day 3 photo.  The Horned Lark can be found in large open areas - in Connecticut, we find them at Hammonasset Beach and at UConn's Horsebarn Hill.

Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris)

AvesInArt Challenge Day 2

Today we took one of our favorite family field trips - heading to the Hammonasset Beach State Park for some birding, and stopping along the way at the Book Barn in Niantic.  Here's Jorge's submission for today, a female Northern Harrier, captured as she cruised her hunting circuit over the marsh.

NORTHERN HARRIER, Circus hudsonius

Sue's subject was closer at hand, a Song Sparrow foraging for grass seeds, partially concealed behind last summer's dried marsh grasses.

SONG SPARROW, Melospiza melodia

2014 GNSI Annual Meeting - Boulder, Colorado

University of Colorado - Boulder, with the Flatiron formation as a backdrop (more on this below)..

The annual meeting runs for a whole week, from Saturday to Saturday in mid-July, with workshops, informational sessions, technique demonstrations and meetings. There's also a portfolio-sharing session, a member's art exhibit, a banquet, an auction and field trips.  The field trips usually bracket the week, and participants often arrive early or stay late to get out to see the local sights.

The university's iconic red tile rooftops, and ochre and pink sandstone. This is Kittredge Hall, our dormitory.

The Natural HIstory Museum, where the Guild's member exhibit hangs until September.

The Natural History Museum is open every day and is FREE.  The exhibit space is small, but thoughtfully addresses local, as well as global issues.  There is an inviting space on the lower level designed for socializing and wandering amongst curio cabinets - with comfy chairs, a few work tables, a thermos of coffee, a current exhibit or two and some old taxidermy.

The GNSI exhibit has a lovely hall all to itself, with excellent interpretive signage.

Photoshop class in the new Visual Arts Center on campus.

One of my classes is pictured above, working in the computer lab, equipped with twenty new PowerMacs.  The instructor is a scientific (and medical) illustrator who shared some of her "tips and tricks" for masking in Photoshop. Many scientific illustrators these days combine traditional and digital techniques to produce their illustrations.

Steller's Jays (Cyanocitta stelleri) in the research collection.

During lunch break I skipped out to visit the bird collections, in the lower level of the Natural History Museum.  Vertebrate Collections Manager Emily Braker entertained my questions and requests to see specimens - I loved the Steller's Jays (photo above).

Morning field trip to El Dorado Canyon, a few minutes south of Boulder.

As I mentioned in the introduction, there was a variety of field trips offered to conference attendees. You could visit Boulder's Tea House (imported piece by piece from Nepal), you could tour the NOAA facility, take a brewery tour, visit Denver's Botanic Garden, take an overnight trip into Rocky Mountain National Park or, my option, take the morning hike up into El Dorado Canyon.  It was an easy walk, just enough to gain some altitude and appreciate some higher elevation flora and fauna - and return us to campus in time for afternoon workshops.

A not-so-threatening reminder to respect the rattlesnakes encountered along the trail.

After a great week of workshops I treated myself to a free day to explore Boulder's Chautauqua Park:

"The Flatirons" as seen from Chautauqua Park in Boulder.

Chautauqua Park in Boulder lies on the west side of the city, on the slopes of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.  It's home to some great hiking trails and the Chautauqua Association of Boulder.  The park's iconic Flatirons are a group of geologic formations popular with the area's rock-climbers.  A network of trails meanders throughout the park, following ridges, creek valleys, skirting the base of the flatirons and bisecting the open meadows.  Spur trails lead climbers to the rock-climbing routes up the flatirons.

My bird list for the day included both Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees, Steller's Jays, Western Bluebirds and Western Tanagers, Common Ravens and Plumbeous Vireos.

Happy New Year 2015 - and a challenge for January.

A new year, a new beginning - AvesInArt creators Jorge de Leon and Susan Hochgraf have challenged each other to make a new photo and a new drawing or painting each day throughout the month of January.
Let's get started!

White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)

Jorge's submission for January 1st is this White-throated Sparrow, which he found late in the afternoon gleaning sunflower seeds from the ground below our birdfeeders at home.  This bird will probably roost for the night in this same yew shrub, up a bit higher in the branches, concealed from view and sheltered from the cold wind.

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

Sue's submission for today is a male Northern Cardinal, also seen under the birdfeeders in the late afternoon.  This sketch is done with a fine-point Sharpie marker on paper.  Two males and a female made brief visits, spooked by my presence at the window, but were there long enough to capture their cardinal essence.