Drawing - Nazca Booby

Nazca Booby - Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

The Nazca Booby features in many tourist photos taken in the Galapagos Islands.  It's a large, striking bird that doesn't fear humans, so is easily photographed by people with ordinary cameras.  It's an interesting bird, with "interesting" nesting methods - siblicide anybody?

This drawing was done a little different than normally for me.  I have never seen this bird, have never been to the Galapagos.  I also wanted to try a slightly looser drawing, without the necessity of drawing each feather barb!  My Baltimore Oriole put me behind schedule, and I wanted to catch up!  I found the photo at Morguefile.com- a photography site that allows the creation of derivative works.

Most stock photography sites do NOT allow derivative works (such as drawings) to be created from their photos.  Even the "creative commons" websites usually do not allow this, something I've always thought to be a rather interesting omission...

A lot of the feather detail was lost in the scanning of this picture - not sure if this is operator error, or if I need a new scanner!

Here is the original photo:

Drawing - Baltimore Oriole

Baltimore Oriole - Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

Baltimore Orioles are amazing birds!  After a looooooong winter, I can't wait til they arrive - if they arrive!  We had Orioles in 2004, then not again until 2008 and this year, always in the last half of May.  Sugar water, oranges and suet are their favorites, but we had one male using our peanut feeder one year - doing his best impression of a woodpecker!  Every year, I hope that a pair will stay put and nest in our area, but they never do.  Not that I blame them - the city is a tough place to raise children! 

This individual was sitting atop the feeder hanger, and had fluffed up against a spring chill. 

It seems like a funny thing to do, to draw such a colorful bird using shades of grey!

So many sightings, so few species

I'm almost finished reading "To See Every Bird On Earth", a story about birding, and a birder who has seen over 7000 species.  I also re-read "Birding:  Tales Of A Tribe".  Interesting to compare the two, the former is written by a non-birder who has been on many birding trips, and the second by a very keen birder. 

I don't see myself wanting to see that many birds...  I like birds, and taking bird trips, but that's extreme.  Whoa. 

It did make me curious for one thing - I wanted to have a chronological life list.  I want to be able to say what my 100th bird was.  I had a life checklist, but wasn't sure where it was.  Found most of my bird books and entered all the info I could find into a database.  Ended up with 2605 records.  For a piddly life list of 183.  Figured it would be at least 200.  Sigh.  I could increase it without birding if I could get some of my bad blurry photos recognized - my pics aren't good enough to say which peeps I've seen, so I didn't count any.  But that won't make it 200. 

It ends up being especially bad considering that my yard list is 75! 

Oh well, more excuse to go birding!

Global Warming is a Hoax!

Apologies for the heading - this is NOT my opinion.  This "movement" of people who do choose to believe that global warming is a "hoax" baffles me completely.  And what is with the "evolution is still just a theory" crowd???  Good grief...  Don't start a discussion with somebody like this - it heads REAL quickly into "I believe".  Folks, that's not a rebuttal, that's a childish "you can't make me" retort.

Believe in whatever you want to believe.  But don't expect to be taken seriously if you've got nothing to back it up with.

The Wall Street Journal has a new article out, summarizing (and rebutting) most of the claims of the "I don't believe in Global Warming" crowd.  Just a synopsis, but handy.

Click Here for the Story

New drawing underway...

Any guesses?  I hope it's visible - my scanner isn't the greatest, and seems to leave out a fair bit of detail. 

Animated WIP - American Robin

This site lets you make animated gifs from your jpeg files. Thought I would try it with my WIP image files of the American Robin. A more interesting one would be from the stage before these - when I'm trying to get the profile right, that one would jump around a lot!  It takes me forever to get that one right, but making a gif from that would mean scanning the page every two or three minutes!  Maybe in the future! 

Implications of feeding birds

This is a topic that always interests me - what effect do we have on wild birds when we put out bird feeders?  I worry almost constantly that I'm only helping the invasive House Sparrows and European Starlings when I put out bird food.

There's an article on BBC News (found on Birdchick) detailing the evolutionary changes underway within the Blackcap.

There's an interesting lack of opinion as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing... Must nosh on these thoughts...

Drawing - American Robin

American Robin, Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

Robins aren't rare by any stretch of the imagination, so tend to be uninteresting to birders, except when they turn up out of season.  So we see them a lot in our travels, but I'm always keen for them!

Our tiny yard is located in an old section of the city, so has many big, old trees around.  The yards are small, so there aren't many open stretches of the sort that robins prefer.  Hence, not many robins.  This spring was different, a new pond setup convinced them to stop and visit. 

Drawing water was a new trick!  Actually, this bird was tricky to draw in general - he kept creeping down and to the right on the paper!  Tried my best to center him on the page, but didn't work too well!  Hence the slightly cut off right foot.  I hope he forgives me the indignity.