Nature: A Murder of Crows

Watched this on PBS last night... fascinating.

People who live with parrots know that the birds watch us, sometimes to figure out how to get along, and sometimes to figure out how to push our buttons. Apparently, some of our outside avian companions do it as well.

It's fairly common lore, I think, about the crows at the University of Washington. The story goes that crows that were captured for banding by a group of students started harassing those students, and kept at it for at least the length of the term. Now a wildlife biologist at the University is studying facial recognition in groups of crows.

(d)Evolution

Last year around this time I was drawing people. Then I switched to birds. Now I'm working on shells and fossils.

I've discovered some things over the last year or so:

I have a lot more success if spend some time on getting-to-know-you sketches. These are the ones where the expectations are really, really low, the "Look, I just need to get a feel for how this thing works" sketches.

Like this, multiple views of the shell of a moon snail, a "predatory sea slug":


Most of the doodles on birdlydrawn are sketches of this type. There's no art anywhere in this kind of work. It's truly just to try to get an initial sense of what I'm looking at, to work out what's happening in space.

In my zoological illustration class, we're working on learning how to use carbon dust. So after the getting-to-know-you sketch comes the rough measured drawing in graphite, with some values.


Still not much going on in the way of artistic expression, but it's one step further along the continuum of understanding.

Next up: I'll take this view at 75% and experiment with carbon dust on a smaller sheet of paper. Then, I'll go to 125% and do the final version of the assignment.

Here's my other discovery: I usually have to do assignments like this twice, once to get a sense of where I'm going (get the rookie technical mistakes out of the way) and once to make some actual headway. In other words, my real beginner experience happens the second time around when I'm not freaking out about getting to the work and can actually pay attention to what I'm doing.

Slow on the uptake? Perhaps, but I prefer to think of it as being deliberate about my work. It's my experience after all, and this is how I get the most out of it.

Sitta canadensis: Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Red-Breasted Nuthatches (along with their cousins, the Pygmy Nuthatches) are some of my favorite birds in this region. I tend to see them in the fall and spring, with the chickadees and woodpeckers, which leads me to believe that they may summer in the mountains and come to the basin for winter.

They're gregarious and social, and right now they're major players in the festival of songbirds in the parks.


What I love about them is that if you hear that they're close, you can stop for a few moments to get a look, and almost invariably, one scout will come down from the branches to see who you are and what you're up to. I don't know if the scout is the one who picks the short end of the straw or if it's the most outgoing bird of the group, one that might actually be interested in figuring out what's going on.

Either way it's kind of cool.

Doodled from this photo.

Aix galericulata: Mandarin Duck

The Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) is a medium-sized perching (tree nesting) duck. Although closely related to the Wood Duck (on of my personal favorites, especially this time of year), the Mandarin lives in Asia.


I wonder what purpose those "sails" on the wings serve, or rather, if they serve any purpose beyond decoration...

A Year of Birdly Drawn

"I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day -- the invocations and benedictions of the Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.

I started BirdlyDrawn a little more than a year ago. My family (Dana's side and my side) was going through some upheaval. I was in the process of leaving art school because the amount of focus required was too great for the challenges of my life at the time. I had just left a job that - after 15 years - had left me sick and broken down.


I needed to draw -- it's better than therapy, for sure -- and I needed a way to add some focus to my life.


So I turned to birds.


My attention was not misplaced.


A few months ago I became the editor of Spokane Audubon's newsletter, The Pygmy Owl.


Next week, I start a natural science illustration program at the University of Washington.


BirdlyDrawn has helped me (and will, I hope, continue to help me) change my focus. It has unearthed possibilities that I didn't know existed a year ago...


Where it will eventually lead, I have no idea. But I'm grateful for the path I'm on now and looking forward to finding out where it will go from here.

Falco mexicanus: Prairie Falcon

This month's "Bird of the Month" for the newsletter was the Prairie Falcon. They look a little bit like Peregrine Falcons, but their malar strips are narrower, their underparts are more buff-colored than rust, and they've got dark axillars (wingpits!).

Their range is pretty much the entire Western US, with a tiny bit of Canada and Mexico at the far north and south. They thrive in areas that have both cliffs (for nesting) AND plains (for hunting ground squirrels); we've got those conditions in spades in this part of the world. They're studied extensively at the The Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Southwest Idaho.


Doodled from this photo.