Bird of prey

Cooper's Hawk

Are you all sick of the bird drawings yet? :D

Since the cortisone injection last Wednesday, the swelling in my foot seems to have gone down a bit. The doc told me that I should starting feeling its effects 'come the weekend'. Well, I didn't, to be honest. But, now, one week later, I think something good is happening in the foot. Woohoo.

Having been cooped up inside the house since mid September, I'm really ready to get out and just take a walk around the block. Hopefully, that will happen soon.

As one can imagine, sitting on the sofa for hours on end ain't all that grand. Fortunately, drawing has helped me get out of my head a bit these past few days and for that I'm grateful. Above is a another fave bird of mine: the Cooper's Hawk. I got a bit tired of drawing wee cute birds & decided to give this one a go. This guy is my first attempt. He looks a bit lumpy, but I'm digging it.

Extremities

Pink robin with a bit of bedding in beak.

If you can nail rendering hands, feet, or in this case, wee bird feet, then you're winning in my book. I have never been particularly good at drawing extremities. Once, way back in the 90s, when I was drawing a lot, I did get close to drawing realistic, human hands. It felt like an accomplishment.

I took a basic drawing course when I was still living in Zurich. The instructor was a local woman with talent to spare. Evey session, she'd bring in art texts from the local library relevant to the task at hand. One of our assignments was to draw a self-portrait. On that day she had brought in books showing how 'the greats' had rendered heads. I remember thumbing through a text filled with images of various human heads drawn by da Vinci. I had never thought about the size of heads before that exercise. One thing to keep in mind, she told us, was that our craniums are larger than we think they are. When creating a forehead, for example, we weren't to be shy. Also, placing the eyes nearly half-way down the face was key.

I like the results of my self-portrait even though the eyes have a bit of a 'manga' quality about them. When you think about it, the distance from the top of my head down to the bottom bit of my eye balls isn't scant. It would seem that I have a big old head and probably so do you!

C'est moi

Hot pink pencil

I have been checking out 'robins of Australia' on the internet recently and found scads of images of this little guy. You might not be able to tell by the drawing above, but the male pink robin, actually has a HOT PINK breast. I didn't have a hot pink pencil, so I used just regular old pink and a bit of red pencils instead. I'd love to visit Tasmania in order to see this bird up close and personal. I wonder if he's people-shy?

Bored doodle

I've been laid up with a bum foot for the duration. The doc says I have capsulitis. How fun. In the past week or so I've watched ALL of the Netflix. ALL OF IT. I'm so bored.

Today, I remembered that I like to doodle and I have the most of tools with which to do it! For the past hour I've been drawing my favorite bird, the European Robin. I write 'European' because our No. American variant is basically a Black Bird with a red breast. -very different.

Here's my doodle of the dear Euro-Robin: (please, bear in mind that I neither have a decent eraser nor do I have every colored pencil under the sun, so my robin looks a bit blue tit in hue)

We had a robin who visited us regularly in the garden when we lived in Greenwich. He would usually come to greet us when we dined outside. Crumbs always came his way. He was no dummy. American robins, by contrast, are not interested in humans or their food at all. They'd rather be out on a lawn pulling up worms.

European Robin

Euro-Robin sans color, 1.5" in height

I really miss seeing the wee fellow out in the back garden.  So sketching him, sort of, brings him 'to life' for me on this side of the Atlantic.  Our American robin looks like a female black bird wearing an orange bib.  -not a bad-looking bird, but just very different.

Euro-robin with his orange face mask.

Bird on a Branch

The enchanting European Robin

North American Red-breasted Robin

Bird watching...

in London, and I don't mean checking out the ladies!  Although that may occasionally happen, too.


Since moving into a place with a garden and having Greenwich Park almost at our doorstep, we've had a wonderful "eye load" of bird watching.  The bf received a groovy, little bird book for his birthday mid-May, and, since then, we've supplemented that mini-tome with another one that includes raptors.

Bold Robin chilling in our garden.

One of the most common birds to be spotted here in our Greenwich garden is the Robin.  Unlike an American Robin, the English Robin is sparrow-sized, and, as you can see, has orange covering his face and upper chest.  When I first saw the Robin, I thought of it wearing a little, orange ski-mask and imagined him breaking into bird houses looking for grub to steal.  This particular Robin is a "regular" to our garden having been fed by the kids who used to live here.  We see him daily, and, as he's so familiar, were able to shoot this picture of him with great ease before he flitted off over the back fence.

 

Another bird of note, and I did mean that pun, is the Black Bird.  The male, replete with large yellow-orange beak and yellow-ringed eyes has a bit of a whacked-out look to him.  He's more the size of an American Robin, and has the most amazing song consisting of a variety of notes sung loud and long.  The female is all brown.  There was a female Black Bird in the garden today, and I felt like telling her, "you're supposed to be black!"

Say it loud!  She's brown and she's proud!

Tits, I told you we're not talking about the ladies, are another feature of English garden life.  The most viewed Tit is the (well, we think) Coal Tit.  Both males and females boast black 'caps' with white cheeks.  They don't seem to be particularly fond of being in the garden when we're out there.  We usually spy them from the kitchen window hopping about the soil looking for things to eat.

Tit on a Wire

One of the most startling features of the English garden is the occasional appearance of the Wood Pigeon.  In contrast to the Common Pigeon that also inhabits this area, the Wood Pigeon is a fairly dignified-looking sort.  Full-figured, gray-breasted with a white collar and yellow eyes, this tidy-looking bird is a rather attractive addition to Greenwich Park and the surrounding environs.  However, when rocks up to your back garden to nosh on the seed that you've laid out for the other birds, then, well, it's sort of a bummer.  I'm glad, at least, it's not a bum-legged, scurvy-looking, mongrel pigeon that comes to scrounge food, but I still want it to fly away back to whatever park it came from.

Wood Pigeon

We're hoping to install a bird bath, some feeders, and, maybe, replace the crusty, old, rotted-out bird house that's been lodged seemingly for years behind a bush along the back fence with a new one.  Our garden could well become the vacation spot for local birds around town.  -so long as no pigeons or, maybe, even, more importantly, no crows show up to gate crash, then I'm happy to welcome them.