Starting out today's post with a couple pages out of my Nature Journal. The top one is from my walk at Daniel Webster made last Friday afternoon, I consider it before Hurricane Irene. The page below I made yesterday prior to going to my drawing session, so it is after. The image above (drawn from a photo when I got home) is of an Eastern Phoebe who somehow flew into the entrance building at Daniel Webster and couldn't seem to find it's way out. Poor thing, I did finally chase it in the right direction, but it did fly into windows a couple of times before it managed to go. I hope it didn't injure itself.
The other excitement for the day was to see a large white Egret/crane at the pond. It was too far away for me to photograph, but I was able to view it well enough through my field glasses to say it was either the white morph of a Great Blue Heron, or a Great Egret, I couldn't see the legs to really identify it. There was also a Hawk who stopped by, and I spent time watching another Eastern Phoebe swooping down toward the pond surface to catch bugs and its dinner. They are very fun to watch. They perch on the dead trees between flights looking for bugs, when they see one off they go only to return to their perch to eat.
Yesterday I did notice some wind damage at the sanctuary, at least one downed tree, and some broken branches. The bird in the drawing above is a Northern Mockingbird, there was quite a small flock of them, I think I counted at least 5 at one point, perhaps this years fledglings. There were also a fairly large number of Canada geese, at least 3 flocks though they tended to merge when they were in the fields feeding so there may have been more. The parking lot also showed evidence of visiting geese.
Some other visitors came into a Hide while I was there and mentioned that they had just seen an Osprey, I didn't see it, but later another couple and I were watching a very large bird in the top of a distant tree. It was too far for us to ID, but now I wonder if it was the Osprey, it was certainly one of the raptors.
Below is a scan of my current work in progress:
I am not entirely sure where this is going, or even what it is, but it is fun to work on. I am working on another piece of my grey Stonehendge paper with ink and colored pencils.
Below is my figure drawing from last night:
I am not totally thrilled with it. Drawing foreshorten legs is not easy, well the actual drawing isn't that hard, but giving the viewer the visual cues they need so that they "see" it as foreshorten is not so easily done.
Irene has left many areas without power, I noticed a lot of non-working stop lights yesterday on my drive over to Daniel Webster. Scott said that the power only came back on in the studio around 4:00 p.m. but that he had brought candles so if it hadn't come on we would have been working by candle light. I have to admit that would have been interesting, though tricky for the painters as it is hard to see color in low light. The color receptors in the eye shut down if there isn't enough light.
I was lucky where I live and didn't loose power except for a few flickers, but I noticed last night as I was driving home that there were still some major sections that were without light. Irene dropped a fair amount of rain on us with lots of wind, still she could have caused even more damage then she did so I am thankful it wasn't a stronger storm.
One last photograph, made last Friday at Daniel Webster:
Not the best photo, I fear it is just slightly out of focus. Problem is this is my best photo out of the series I made of this Short Tailed Swallowtail. Pretty isn't it, so I hope you will forgive me for posting it.
That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.
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