#28 - Pileated Woodpecker

Back to it. Here is a crazy, joker-faced Pileated Woodpecker, done with my latest toys - water soluble oil pastels - on a thick gray sheet of mi tientes paper.

We have only seen these huge birds in North Carolina around my sister's place on the coast. They are loud and destructive, but look how cool they are with that mask! They are apparently the largest woodpecker in North America. I guess you might get p.o.'d at them if they were digging holes in your nice tall trees around your home, but I don't think I could do anything but stare at them in amazement.

If you have never heard one, click here for great audio courtesy of Cornell Ornithography Lab.

#27: Royal Terns

I've been a pen-and-ink mode lately, so here are some quick pen sketches of the Royal Tern.



We saw these in North Carolina, all over the coast, cruising over the water, plunge-diving down into it to catch fish, and hanging out in big groups on pier posts, always managing to look like they were fighting a strong gale as they were just sitting there. They have deep reddish-orange bills, and that black cap only extends all across the forehead when they are in breeding mode, so says Sibley's.

I can't think of anything more enlightening to say about these birds. Just glad I got at least 2 outta the jar this month! :-)

#26: Vermillion Flycatcher

The perfect bird for Valentine's Day today...



This was the very first bird Randy and I saw together that started our whole birdwatching fascination. He was sitting way up high in a mesquite tree near the Salt River where we had gone camping. We didn't have any bino's at the time, or even a good camera - just a little point-and-shoot. Randy snapped a shot of him and we ooooed and ahhhhed at it when he zoomed in on the viewfinder. We called it "Red Bird" for a long time until we finally dug out an old copy of Sibley's and figured out what he was really called.

I tried to capture the male's deep red breast in my colored pencil drawing, done on vellum, but it's nowhere near as amazing as when you see them out in nature, perched up on a limb against a crystal clear blue sky, fluttering down every now and then to snap up a little bug in the air. They absolutely glow, and the females, which are more pink than red, are beautiful too. Thank you, Valentine, for this picture, and for everything.

#25: Montezuma Quail

This morning when Randy saw this, he told me he thought I had definitely "stepped up my game" from my last post. I had intended to try Mr. Yellowlegs in colored pencil, but after scrapping three pages, decided it was just time to move on to a new bird. Sorry, Yellowlegs, you have lost out to a much more colorful bird, the male Montezuma Quail, which is here in Prismacolor pencils on 8.5x11 sketch paper.

My bird book says that this rare bird, which is only found in Mexico, parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, is "very secretive and difficult to see." I think this must be true, because the one and only time we have seen one was when it was slowly crossing a dirt road up in the Chiricahua mountains near Portal. Key word: SLOWLY. It was like a slow-motion fat little balloon inching its way across the road and on into the rocky grasses along the side. When Randy spotted it, he darn near skidded to a sudden stop, and we got out of the car slowly and quietly so we could watch it. It's a big thing to see one of these. People at our little B&B were excited when we told them. Some people visit the Chiricahuas JUST to try to spot a Montezuma Quail. Ahh, the birding world. It's got its quirks, but it is a fun world, nonetheless.

#24 Yellowlegs rev 1.1

I'm going to call this one: Running Out of Paper and Time.



I started it a couple of days ago and haven't felt like sitting back down to fix it, or start over (which is what I absolutely must do, given the grave miscalculation in subject size to paper size. I mean, I ran out of space EVERYWHERE on this!).

For me, Yellowlegs rank among the more interesting shore birds, because they, at least, tend to stick out with those crazy yellow stilts for legs. I'll give it another shot in colored pencil, maybe that will inspire me to do a serious rendition.

#23: Black-Tailed Gnatcatcher

I decided to draw this on an ATC, Art Trading Card, which means it's all of 2.5" x 3.5"



I also drew it in really poor lighting, so let that be a lesson to me going forward. Anyway, gnatcatchers seem industrious and quirky to me. I love the buzzy whistling noise they make in the palo verde trees around here. I hardly ever know if I'm seeing a blue-gray gnatcatcher or a black-tailed gnatcatcher, and to prove that point, I was supposed to have drawn a blue-gray gnatcatcher and selected this picture, only to realize later, thanks to Randy re-examining things, that it is a black-tailed.