#32: Western Tanager

I caught a glimpse of this summer bird just this past Saturday afternoon, as I was standing in the kitchen chatting with my husband and a friend of his who is heading off to Colombia to teach for a couple of years. I saw it alight near our water fountain, and I gasped, trying to get Randy's attention. I pointed and motioned, "It's a... it's a..." I couldn't think of what it was called. My birding skills have gotten so rusty! Both Randy and our guest managed to see it before it flew off, probably heading to the cooler pines up north. It's so rare that we get to see these beautifully-colored birds in the city. I'm taking it as a good luck sign of beautiful things to come. (Ink with Graphitint & inktense wash, manipulated in photobucket)

#31: Graylag Goose

I guess this is another domesticated bird, but we have only seen them in far southern Arizona on a little lake we almost ran out of gas getting to one day in January 2007 - Parker Canyon Lake. I remember we also saw one our first Bald Eagles down there, and it was freezing cold. Here's what it looks like around there:



I thought it would be fun to draw this gray goose in mechanical pencil. But to be honest, maybe it's because I'm out of practice, it was slow going, and I got bored after a couple of hours. I abandoned my drawing and took it into Photobucket, just to spice things up. I have fun with that Photobucket Fresco tool.

#30: Carolina Wren

Again, I feel like I'm cheating my own goal, because I drew this quick little sketch last December as I was mulling over some ideas for graphic designs that only bird geeks would get. This one is of a Carolina Wren, which sings "Tea Kettle Tea Kettle Tea Kettle." Although if you ask me, it actually sings it backwards, "Kettle Tea Kettle Tea Kettle Tea..." I had all sorts of other ideas for designs based on what birds "say" when they call or sing - maybe I'll resurrect those ideas this year, who knows?

Anyway, the little Carolina Wren we have only seen in - gasp - North Carolina. Very cute little bird with the unmistakable wren-like stripe along the head. They always seemed very busy, twitching about on tree limbs upside down and every which way, foraging for bugs and gathering twigs for nests.

#29: Spotted Towhee

It's a new year. My self-help books tell me it doesn't do a bit of good to beat myself up for not sticking to my goal of drawing a bird a day, and that I should just put one foot forward best I can. So here is my 2012 offering: a Spotted Towhee.

Randy and I love it when one of these happens to take refuge in our yard, because they are so pretty with the glowing black head, tawny sides, and white streaks on the back. We usually get just one in our yard every fall, and it will hang out with us for several months off and on. It stands out amongst the flocks of smaller, drabber white-crowned sparrows and juncos that comprise our winter backyard bird commune, hiding furtively in the bushes, always sticking low to the ground and kicking up the gravel with its feet to find the last dregs of the birdseed we spread around back there.

Every now and then, maybe when it gets lonely, I don't know, it will flutter up to perch up high in our neighbor's mesquite tree and will offer a beautiful, intricate melody of warbling notes that would make anyone turn their head and gasp. But just as quickly, it will fly back down into the bushes. Maybe it decides it can't compete with the noise of the freeway in the distance. Or maybe it decides its better to keep its secret stash of Forrest backyard birdseed to itself.

#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.

#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!