Nature Journal, still catching up

Today I thought that instead of an update on the Mallard Female I have been working on (and I have been working on her) I would show you one of the other drawings I have in progress.

Above is a Green Heron, I used the image of the heron I used for my Nature Journal page in my last Blog update. The herons that day were relatively close and I was able to manage a pretty good photo. The drawing isn't done. The legs/feet and rock it is standing on need more work, also I need to decide what to do about the water background. In the photo the water looks green because of duck weed covering the surface of the water so I have to decide how to handle it. Right now I am just thinking of applying a light tone, I don't want to distract from the image of the bird.

I have two Nature Journal pages today. Above is from a visit to Daniel Webster on July 30th. It was a beautiful sunny day with a temp. in the upper 70's a nice break from some of our heat. First image is of the mallard family that I saw so often this summer. They seemed to prefer the south end of the pond  and were often to be found grooming themselves on rocks exposed by the lower water levels if they weren't feeding on the duck weed.

The bottom photo is of a Great Blue Heron. I don't often see them at Daniel Webster in the man made pond, they really are shy. This one which was quite close for a Great Blue but took off as soon as it either heard me or saw me in the blind, so I only managed the one photograph.

This next spread is also Daniel Webster, this one from a visit on August 6th. I wasn't able to make any good bird photos this week, all of the birds I identified were too much in the distance, Canada Geese, various hawks, Mallard Ducks, Wood Ducks, a Green Heron and a Spotted Sandpiper. It was a good bird viewing day, if not a good day for photographs.

So the top image is my usual tree trunk in the water (which was about the same as last week) and some thistle flower heads. Daniel Webster has a couple of different type of field thistles growing, mostly the smaller flower Canada Thistle (an invader from Europe) but there were a few of the larger Bull Thistle plants. The Gold Finch love Thistle seeds and will go after them as soon as the seed heads have dried out.

Another figure drawing, this one from about 3 weeks ago in August. I am relatively happy with this drawing, and don't have much else to say about it. A couple more posts and I should be caught up with these.

Above is the photo of the Great Blue Heron that I used as my reference for the Journal sketch. It wasn't really all that close to the blind, but still too close for the bird to be comfortable once I arrived.

For my second photo today I thought I would show off one of my Butterfly photographs. This is one of the several Skipper Butterflies that can be found here in MA. They can sometimes be tricky to identify so usually I don't even try. The flower it is feeding on is Blue Vervain. These guys are only about an inch long so I am very pleased with this photograph.

Per usual comments are always welcome.