#22: Brown Creeper

First of all, a humble thank you to the sweet people who kept checking in on this half-neglected blog and sent me encouragement throughout the year. I think I'll lower my sights a bit this coming year, and maybe try to squeeze in a bird a week, or perhaps 2 a month.

Here is 2010's final posting: the appropriately-named Brown Creeper. These nimble little things are such fun to watch as they literally creep up and down the trees, perfectly camouflaged so that they almost look like little pieces of bark jerkily cascading along the trunks. They tend to be solo, making them even more difficult to spot. We've seen them mostly in southern Arizona, around Ramsey Canyon and Patagonia Lake, but Randy actually took this picture of one at Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior this past March. A nice, fun little bird to wrap up the first year of the Bird Jar. This is mechanical pencil on 8x10 sketch paper.

#21: Costas Hummingbird

It felt good just to hold a pencil again. Maybe I'll get back into this in 2011. On sketch paper, about 5"x5"

We are good friends with the Costas Hummingbird, as we always have at least one at our feeder all throughout the year, even though some people tell us it's impossible that they should stick around hot Phoenix all year-round. But they do, at least in our backyard Karob tree, and Randy always calls them "Bob" for Bob Costas, of course. The guys are gorgeous when the sunlight hits their bright purple handlebar mustache, and they are pretty territorial about the juice in that feeder, let me tell you. Fun to watch.

#20: Lesser Goldfinch

At this rate, the Bird Jar is morphing into a life-long project, I'm afraid. But maybe that's not such a bad thing. Here is a little female Lesser Goldfinch in Sharpie black ink on sketch paper. I thought it interesting, as I was hunting for photos to draw in Randy's volumous photo archives, that the females seemed to always have the most interesting poses, upside down and every which way on the flowers, whereas the males, which are alot more stunning with their bright yellow bellies, green backs, and black caps, seemed to always be just sitting there. These birds are pretty common around here, but I still get excited when I see them in our yard, plucking the seeds out of our yellow wildflowers in the spring.

And, just to show that I AM making some progress on my Bridled Titmouse project, here is an update. Still have a ways to go before this is complete. Randy says this photo is from Ramsey Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains in Sierra Vista - a place we would love to some day call "home."

#19: Bridled Titmouse (WIP)

My current Bird Jar bird is a definite Work-In-Progress, as I somehow got it into my head that it was time for a big, more focused, piece to give me something more interesting to do in the evenings rather than sit around and obsess over home improvement projects and what to make for dinner. I'll post updates to this as I go along, but here is the start of my Bridled Titmouse in colored pencil on a 24x36 piece of Mi Tientes paper. This is from a wonderful photo Randy took, but I can't remember where he took it, I'll have to ask him.

#18: Domesticated White Goose

Colored pencil on a scrap of blue Canson paper. I suppose this guy doesn't really "count" on our list, as he's domesticated, but he is still a beautiful bird. We always see these guys hanging out at Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David, one of our favorite spots to stop and bird on our way to/from southern Arizona to visit family.

I just noticed the date I put on this. It confirms my suspicion that I am living in the future today.

#17: Fulvous Whistling Duck

I learned a new word today, which I had to look up in the dictionary after I drew this one out of the Bird Jar: Fulvous, meaning a brownish-yellow, or tawny color. I guess that word (which I swear I have never heard before, even in the art world) pretty aptly describes this ducky that we haven't seen in a few years since first spotting it in a park in Scottsdale in January 2007. My Smithsonian bird book calls this one of the most widely distributed waterfowl in the world, but we sure don't get many here in central Arizona. As I recall, Randy and I made a special trip to see this duck, along with some rare geese which had stopped by on their migration. That was a fun day, I think on that one day we added something like 5 new birds to our list, which is big for us!

At any rate, here is the Fulvous Whistling Duck. I just love it when Randy scores a photo of birds cocking their heads at us like this:

#16: Western Kingbird

I cheated on this one, and did not draw the Western Kingbird out of my jar. Instead, I drew it as a tribute to the "Mystery Bird" that has been waking us up every night at 4am for the past week or so with an incredible, LOUD morning song. I mean, this song is SOOOO loud, it is truly remarkable. We had no idea what it was: an owl? a love-sick Grackle? So, the other morning, Randy got the camera out and took an audio clip of it, and posted it to his Birding Listserv. (You can listen to it here). Within minutes, we got a half-dozen responses back: Western Kingbird! Apparently, these guys have "morning songs" that sound like a dog's incessant squeaky toy, much different from the songs and calls they make during the day, the sounds we recognize as Western Kingbirds. Who knew? Apparently alot of people!

Anyway, my sincere thanks to the Listserve folks for solving our mystery. Western Kingbirds usually nest around our neighborhood in the spring. They arrived this year right around April 11th. They usually stick around through most of the summer, and we love watching these nimble yellow-and-gray birds float up into the sky from atop a tree branch to catch a bug, then flutter back into place. They are gorgeous birds. And, apparently, with alot on their mind at 4am. But it's nice to have them around, so I'm not going to complain, we are just going to keep our window shut at night!

#15: Marbled Godwit

For today, here is a relatively new bird on our list - we ID'd these on the beach at Carlsbad, CA, over our New Year's vacation.



I know absolutely zilch about the Godwits. But I admired this bird's long, slender beak with the dark tips. He seemed so elegant, strolling along the beach, poking about in the sand.

I drew this tonight with sepia colored pencil on vellum paper.

#14 Hermit Thrush

I don't even know what to say, it's been so long.

Thanks Mike for the kick in the pants.

Hermit Thrush. There is a very cool Native American tale about how this bird got the most beautiful song amongst all the birds on the earth, but because he cheated when he found it, he was ashamed and hid from the world in the underbrush of the trees. You can read it here.

I guess they still feel alot of guilt about it, because I don't know that I have ever really heard this bird make so much as a peep, it is so quiet, usually scratching stealthily in the brush underneath the trees, or sometimes sitting quietly on a branch overheard, waiting for us to move on.

One time, Randy asked me what bird I would be. Being a guy, he naturally said he'd be a hawk. Me, I think I am a Hermit Thrush.

Bird 13: Sulfur-Bellied Flycatcher

Okeeeee... almost 3 weeks later and this is the best I could come up with:



So. This drawing is all about getting BEYOND it. Getting something done that you know you need to get done, and getting it out of the way -- hopefully on to a brighter tomorrow when I go back to the excitement of drawing a new bird out of my jar and getting it down on paper the same day, rather than sitting on it for near 3 weeks, dwelling on how little time I have to draw anymore, stressing out that I have no time to draw, freaking out that I feel like I have already forgotten to draw.

So. Today's bird (the three-week-ago bird) is the Sulfur Bellied Flycatcher, which is actually a totally cool bird we've only seen a couple of times down in southern Arizona way up in the tops of the trees, completely unmistakable with their bright orange underparts and brown streaked backs. I don't have much else to say about this wonderful amazing bird other than the fact that I'm extremely relieved to have something - anything - down on paper so I can move on to the next bird. Amen!

Day 12: Gilded Flicker

Mechanical pencil, 8x10 on sketch paper

Here is another bird we see so much in our backyard that we tend to not take many pictures of it. But they are pretty eye-catching with their polka-dotted suits, yellow-tinged tails and bright red slashes across the cheeks. Plus they have this distinctively loud, panicked-siren-shriek they make whenever they fly in attack the hummingbird feeder. You can imagine that our tiny little hummingbirds make way for them when they dive in.

Day 11: Brown Thrasher

mechanical pencil on sketch paper, 5x7

I knew exactly which poses I wanted to capture of this bird when I drew it out of my bird jar. We saw these guys strutting their stuff in North Carolina a couple of summers ago. Not sure if they were showing off/flirting, or threatening/defending turf! It appears that these birds are alot more common over there on the east coast than they are here. In North Carolina, they were everywhere, around the parking lots, in the parks, hanging out at the edges of the woods, making all kinds of radical music, just another part of the background noise and scenery there. Whereas if you were to hear of one being spotted here in central Arizona, it would be reason for you to play hooky from work and make a special pilgrimmage with your binos and telephoto lens, just so you could add them to your list. They do get one or two pretty regularly at one of our favorite places, Boyce Thompson Arboretum, near Globe, and it is always a score to get to see it.

I sketched this out in bed last night while watching House Hunters, and was thinking I'd apply myself more to it today, but I have a full schedule lined up so this is probably all I will do on this for now. Maybe. We'll see.

Day 10: Cedar Waxwing

Quick prismacolor pen & pencil sketch of one of (another of) my all-time favorite birds! The patterning and colors on these birds is truly exquisite. On the rare occasions we get to see one of these in Arizona - usually in flocks wayyy up in the tops of the trees overhead, I can't help but think of my dad's homestead ranch in Montana, which has been sadly neglected and falling into disrepair ever since he died three years ago. As a city girl, I am at a loss what to do with it - keep it? How? It's 360 acres of grazing land with things like wells for water, fences to maintain and noxious weeds I have no clue how to recognize that need to be kept from spreading - completely overwhelming to me. The ranch was where my dad was born and grew up - it was his baby later in life, he loved it so, so much, and I loved my dad so, so much, and now I am neglecting something he put so much work into. Every time I think about the ranch, it makes me want to cry.

But last time we visited the ranch in July 2008, Randy and I saw whole families of Cedar Waxwing up there eating the chokecherries and feeding their young, and they didn't seem to mind the disrepair. It was a beautiful, wonderful sight. I swear to you, just that fact alone makes me want to do whatever it takes to figure out how keep that ranch in our family. Somehow.

Day 9: Peach-Faced Lovebird

Colored pencil on mylar, about 5x7

As I fall further behind on my pie-in-the-sky goal of drawing a bird a day, I get rewarded with one of my all-time favorite birds around here in the Phoenix area. They are not native, of course, but we have whole flocks of them in pockets around town - they have adapted and flourished here in the desert! For anyone who doubts in the rewards of birding, seeing these attack your hummingbird feeder is a total treat. You can usually hear them a mile away, they are so loud. My husband has dozens and dozens of absolutely beautiful photographs of these birds, and I probably should have drawn a full-body picture to show off the vibrant blue tail feathers, but I barely had time to do this today. But it was fun, and reminded me of the kind of rewarding suprises birding always seems to give me. Easter egg hunting, totally!

Day 8: Pygmy Nuthatch

I need to loosen up a bit on this project, not make it so difficult on myself by feeling like I need to make perfect pictures each and every time. It took me 5 days to get myself to finish up Ms. Kingfisher because I wanted to do a "good" job on it. Then I started feeling frustrated because I didn't have the time to work on it. The bird jar, I have to remind myself, is not about perfect art. It's about getting myself to pick up a pen, pencil, brush, pastel stick etc. every day so that I can stay connected to my creative side. That's all. So, in that spirit, I am back on track with 1-minute quick impressionistic ink sketches of today's very fun Pygmy Nuthatch, in all of my scribble glory:



While we see alot of White-Breasted Nuthatches (which we love, just for the cooing sound they make), we have only seen Pygmy Nuthatches when we trek up north to the forests around Flagstaff. All nuthatches rank pretty darned high on the "cute" scale, the way they hop all around tree trunks, up, down, turning this way and that, upside down, rightside up, picking up insects and cooing to one another in the flock along the way.

EDIT: Okay, okay - I drew the wrong type of nuthatch! These are actually the more common white breasted nuthatch. When I draw that bird out of my jar, I will swap out with the pygmy.

Day 7: Belted Kingfisher

Picture walking along one of Arizona's watersheds on an already hot spring day, lulled by the heat and beginning to tire of the monotonous browns and dull grays of shore birds all around, when all of a sudden you hear it: kak-kak-kak-kakkkkk! Yes! You perk up immediately, because you know it is one of these:



Every time I see a kingfisher, I feel like my bird watching day is one of the best. There is nothing like watching one kite above the water and dive down into it, emerging with a fish twisting around in its huge long beak. They are big blue crazy-haired hunters. Plus I love how the female on the Belted variety has more color than the male - for a change!

Day 6: Least Sandpiper

5x7, Colored pencil on sketch paper.

I'm not much into shorebirds, mainly because I'm terrible at ID-ing them, and many of them look the same to me yet. This little guy (gal?) is a prime example. Umm... Least Sandpiper? Western Sandpiper? We think Least, based on the yellow legs. So there we go.

It is amazing, when you stop to think about it, that we see such a variety of shorebirds here in central Arizona, in the middle of the desert. Who knew? But there they are, sometimes in flocks, sometimes solitary, hanging out on our dammed-up rivers, man-made watersheds and golf course ponds. And even, so I've heard, around some swimming pools. I'm glad they've found places to take rest here with us on their migration travels across the continent. Arizona is a nice place to see.

Day 5: Osprey

11x14, mechanical pencil on sketch paper.

I feel I did not do this bird justice with this drawing. Ospreys are all about the wings - huge wingspan! - and I ran out of room on my sketchpad. Maybe I will go back and re-try this one again some day when I have more time.

Ospreys must be one of the most entertaining birds of prey to watch, as they kite above the water and dive down and snatch up their victims in their long talons. I can't believe I lived 40 years of my life not seeing them, or, if I did, assuming they were "hawks" and not taking the time to observe them. Of course, I pretty much ignored all birds, in general, until my husband started getting into Peregrin falcons with his 4th graders during a lesson one year, and then we were hooked. Amazing how fast and easy it is to become a bird nerd! I liken it to Easter egg hunting: it is always fun to go outside and be surprised at what you might find hidden in nature's landscape.

Day 4: Black-Chinned Sparrow

5x7, colored pencil on mylar paper - my first attempt on this type of paper - very fun.

This is a female, so she doesn't have the black chin. We only just added this type of sparrow to our list last November, and this is the only photo we have of one. We saw 2-3 of them hiding in some low desert brush on a hillside at Boyce Thompson Arboretum. She may not look like much, but I remember we were really excited to have finally spotted this little sparrow that everyone else except us seems to see! I don't remember much more about them, except that they let us get pretty close, letting us soak them in as if making up for lost time.

Day 3: White-Crowned Sparrow

5x7, Mechanical pencil on sketch paper.

Today's bird is actually yesterday's bird, drawn and posted today. I'm only 3 days in and I'm already skipping days. But it was my birthday yesterday, so that is my excuse.

Anyway, this little sparrow couldn't be any more opposite from the Eared Grebe the day before. This guy we see all the time, all over Arizona and pretty much everywhere we've been. So now we tend to ignore it, and rarely think to take pictures of it. Oh, it's just a white-crown, we mumble impatiently as we scour our backyard with the bino's. But sometimes, every now and again, we take the time to actually really admire how beautiful these guys are - and the girls too, although they're not as glamorous. I mean, look at that crisp black and white crown - they simply glow in the sunlight. And they make a cute whispy sound as they flit around. In fact, I don't think it would feel like wintertime here in Phoenix if we didn't hear the whisp of white crowned sparrows mingling in with the higher-pitched chips of the dark-eyes Juncos.

Day 2: Eared Grebe

It took me some time to dig up a photo we had taken of one of these, and it turns out it's been 3 years since we've seen one - on Patagonia lake in the southern part of Arizona in January during a birthday trip we took. Wow - 3 years! I can't even think of what I've done during that time... work, draw, freak out about the passing of time...?

But I digress. Here is today's bird, in all of his/her dull non-breeding glory, done in mechanical pencil (about 5"x7" on sketch paper):



You can tell an eared grebe by the white "ear" patch on the back of the neck, but other than that (and the fluffy butt), they aren't too thrilling.

Unless, of course, you get to see them in the summer, in breeding mode, which we have not. At that time, they get pretty darned spectacular, judging by the photos and drawings I've seen. Since I don't have any of my own pix, I did just a brief sketch from one of my bird books, just so you can see the long, lashy feathers that fan out from the red eye:



It just makes you realize that you can't always judge something the first time you see it.

Day 1: American Dipper

15-minute sketch with ink.

I love that this is the first bird I drew out of my jar.

Athletic, fun, self-sufficient, unassuming and a bit of a loner. Sort of like who I am (the last three) and who I want to be (the first two).

We caught our first brief glimpse of American Dippers in July 2007 at Yellowstone Park, and a year later we really got to watch them skimming and swimming in a cold stream near Provo, Utah. We also saw plenty more in the cold streams of Juneau and Ketchikan on our cruise tour to Alaska this past summer. They were diving in and out of the currents, jumping around the rocks, and flitting around in the spray, catching insects galore. They are such cool birds. I mean, how many birds (outside of ducks) do you see diving and swimming in the water?

Introduction

So, this year, as I turn 44, I felt I needed a project that would give my life some direction and maybe even help me find some meaning.

I thought up "The Bird Jar" because I like birds, and I like drawing.

As of this moment, my husband and I have 298 birds on our "life list," which isn't all that much in the birding world, but seems pretty manageable to attempt to draw in the space of one year. So, I converted our list to little tiny labels that I cut up and stuck in an old sundried-tomato jar. My goal with this project, and this blog, is to reach into my jar, once a day, and draw. And maybe I'll improve my drawing skills. Who knows, maybe I'll even be inspired with some deeper revelations about my place on this planet, watching and drawing the birds.