I Made Another Bird!

Day 199: I hope my readers will indulge me in these breaks from my customary subject matter. Believe me, drawing takes up only a very small portion of my pandemic routine, and most of my day is filled currently with spinning, weaving, quilting and (weather permitting) gardening. That said, I am trying to do at least one sketch per day as I try to find my style. The White-Crowned Sparrow shown above was first done in pencil, then inked before being coloured in with Prismacolor pencils. It was an experiment to see whether I preferrred the pencils to watercolours, and now I can't decide. Each medium has its advantages and disadvantages. I find I have more control over where the colour goes with pencils, but I prefer the way watercolours blend. Of course, watercolours sometimes blend when you don't mean them to, so that can also be a disadvantage to a novice watercolourist like me. Pencils, on the other hand, tend to accumulate more heavily on any textural bumps in the paper, but I understand this issue can be reduced by using a "blending stump." I don't happen to have one handy, but YouTube is full of videos on how to make your own. For this illustration, I used the basic sketching instructions (circles, ovals and lines) in "Laws Guide to Drawing Birds" and changed it up a bit to individualize the "racing-stripe" sparrow by altering the position of the legs and feet and adding a branch.

How To Draw A Bird

Day 198: A month ago, I was telling an artistic friend that I couldn't draw a cardboard box well enough to make it recognizable, and it was true. She encouraged me to keep trying, pointed me toward another artist whose explanation of perspective was very helpful (at least it taught me to draw the cardboard box so that it didn't look like someone had sat rather heavily on it) and, bolstered by that small success, I invested in a couple of cheap sketchbooks. For the last week or so, I've been drawing something every day. Birds have been a recurring theme, although they haven't been my only subjects. Another friend suggested that I buy John Muir Laws' "Guide to Drawing Birds." I did, and here you see the results of the first lesson. Laws' system was for a pencil sketch, but once I had inked in my "wobbler," I decided he needed some colour. Since I hadn't illustrated facial markings, I turned him into a Yellow Warbler. The pencil and ink drawings at the top of this image show the various stages of my work, first creating a basic bird shape with a few lines, an oval and a circle, into which I "carved" the arcs of neck and throat. Then I added detail to the body, face, wing and tail to show the major feather groups, following that with drawing individual feathers. In the penultimate phase, I applied ink with a fine-point Sharpie. Then, not having a "wobbler" to pose for me, I sat at the kitchen table with Roger Tory Peterson in hand as a guide to colour. For a first attempt at drawing a realistic bird, I don't think I did half bad.

We All Make Mistakes

Day 197: Now into weaving the fifth traditional bird's-eye towel on the floor loom, I settled down to work a few nights ago but noticed something odd in the first three inches. One of the diamonds looked a little off, although when I counted threads in each colour change, everything seemed to be correct. I wove a few more throws, but the discrepancy was bothering me. I finally resorted to pulling out a hand lens (used in fiberarts almost as often as in botany) to analyze the problem. Sure enough, 28 throws back, there was a treadling error. Rather cross with myself, I laid the shuttles aside and went to bed, thinking no one would notice if I left it there, especially since it had taken a hand lens for me to find the mistake. But this is not the way the Crow works. I kept myself busy with other projects for the next several days, unable to force myself to continue on the towel.

In my history as a fiber artist/needleworker, I have been known to unravel two-thirds of a sweater body in order to correct a mistake which didn't lend itself readily to being picked back. Likewise, I've torn out sections of cross-stitch in order to place a quarter-stitch I missed on the pattern. I could give more examples, but you get the idea. Mistakes, you see, are simply not allowed. Last night, I reached a determination. This morning, even before my first cup of coffee, I un-wove to the offending throw, fixed it, and re-wove to to my last stopping point. Now I can feel comfortable about going on.

Mating Season

Day 196: Mating season has begun, and yesterday, a few introductions were made with the aid of a Q-tip. The suggestion came from a friend who thought it might work better than the paintbrush I'd been using, and indeed I think it did. More pollen adhered to the cotton, and although the transfer percentage rate was substantially lower, it only takes a few grains to do the trick. I'm sure the neighbours' eyebrows were raised as they watched my antics. The only female flowers currently open are at the very top of the purple vine, and the only way I could reach them was from a ladder. I have never been successful in fertilizing the white Akebia from the purple one (the purple males don't seem to produce viable pollen), the purple females produced 17 fruits last year when pollinated by the white. In order to bear fruit, two different varieties of Akebia quinata are required and hand-pollination is almost mandatory, so if you see me up the ladder with a swabstick in hand, I'm just matchmaking for some rather shy botanicals.

Perhaps A Different Violet

Day 195: I'm confused. Of the 18+ species of Violet native to the Pacific Northwest, a full third are yellow. The remainder are divided between white and blue almost equally. In hexadecimal notation, "violet" is #7F00FF (ribbon background). According to my box of crayons, it's a purple somewhat darker and slightly rosier than that defined by the hex triplet. Streamside Violet (Viola glabella, above) isn't even close with its rich canary shade. Surely there is some logic behind the common appellation of these adorable wildflowers, but would it not have been simpler to refer to them as "violas" rather than anglicizing their scientific name to one so radically different from their nature? No one could confuse them with the musical instrument of the same name and, if one was called upon to justify the term, the shape of the bottom petal and its "bee-guide" stripes bears some resemblance to a viola (stringed). I find this kink in the English language quite distressing, and until someone sorts it out, I will be describing the Goldfinch's brilliant summer feathers as violet in hue.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, Molothrus Ater

Day 194: While they aren't exactly the brightest crayons in the box, Brown-Headed Cowbirds have a nesting strategy which ensures their survival at the expense of other bird species. Molothrus ater does not construct a nest of its own. Rather, this native species (N.B.!) is known to parasitize the nests of at least 140 hosts with a wide range of sizes from Kinglet to Meadowlark, and has been shown to contribute to the decline of such species as Kirtland's Warbler. A female Cowbird may lay as many as 30 eggs in a year, and takes no part in feeding the young, leaving that task to the host. Young Cowbirds generally develop more rapidly than the chicks of the host species and often displace them from the nest. Cowbirds frequently share roosts with blackbirds (here, Red-Winged and Brewer's), and communal roosting sites may hold populations of 100,000 or more. In the last two weeks, several dozen Brown-Headed Cowbirds have joined forces with the Red-Wingeds in my yard, much to my annoyance. While I would never wittingly hurt a bird, my slingshot sits at the ready beside a bowl of rocks at the back door. I aim low, hoping to hit a branch. The ensuing "THUNK!" sets them in flight, but seldom for long. By the time I've walked back around to the living room, one or two of the bravest will have re-settled, inspiring me to run at the window, arms flailing as I scream, "Get outta here, you (censored)!" I won't win, but at least the method has deterred a few.

Best Laid Plans

Day 193: "The best laid plans of" Townsend's Chipmunks "and men gang aft a-gley." Forgive me for bastardizing Rabbie Burns, but in this case, it is warranted. You see, yesterday, I discovered that I had not one but two Townsend's Chipmunks, and while one is cute and tolerable (unlike Douglas Squirrels), two is too many. This morning, I set out both Hav-a-Hart traps and baited them with chunks of homemade oatmeal cookie, as close as I could get to a friend's suggestion of "sugary cheap raisin bread." No sooner had I come back in the house than Mr. Townsend's nose picked up the aroma. As I watched from inside, he tried reaching in through the wires at the back of the trap. No, that wasn't going to work. He went around to the side away from me, and although he couldn't reach the cookie, he managed to get a few sunflower seeds for his pains. He got up on top. I went for the camera, hoping to demonstrate the futility of this project on my end, but by the time I returned to the window, Townsend was sitting beside the fence post. "Aha!" I thought. "He's going to go inside!" And he did. And then to my dismay, he started back out again. I captured his exit in this photo, and I figured I'd been outfoxed once again. However, in the time it took me to process the image, he'd gone in again and had tripped the mechanism. Then I checked the other trap which is substantially smaller. To my complete surprise, the second Townsend was secured inside. I'd like to thank my mother for that cookie recipe, but I'm not sure Townsend will share my belated sentiment.