A New Painting and Some Random Photos

The latest painting is a 9x12" portrait of some migrating Dunlins called, Rest Stop.

A pesky Red Squirrel in a sprouting Black Cottonwood. We only have three squirrel species around here plus Hoary Marmot. We have Red Squirrels around town, Arctic Ground Squirrels up in the hills, and Northern Flying Squirrels in lowland areas with lots of Spruce Trees. I have never seen the uncommon, and nocturnal flying squirrel.

Common Redpoll.

This Savannah Sparrow prefers to run along the ground than to fly.

A Tree Swallow.

A confiding Steller's Jay.

Gray Jays are far less common around town than Steller's Jays. Magpies greatly outnumber both of them put together.

My friend Dan had this young Black Bear in a Birch Tree in his yard. This is his photo.

The bear was chased up the tree by the neighbor's dog. Eventually it came down and ran away.

Remember this painting from a few days ago?

I played with it some more. The painting looks better although the photo is'nt quite as good. Can you see the differences?

Green Spring Fling

Last evening Anchorage Audubon put on a sumptuous potluck get together at Westchester Lagoon. I used the opportunity to walk the coastal trail once again to see how the season is progressing. Grass is growing again and the trees are leafing out. White-crowned Sparrows are singing all over town, and I started seeing Orange-crowned Warblers along the trail.  The photo above is a fishing boat returning to port with Fire Island and Mt. Susitna, (Sleeping Lady) in the background.

There were four Sandhill cranes out on the mudflats. No doubt the same birds that I have been seeing on nearby Fish Creek. They were quite far away but I liked the soft lighting of the overcast sky.

I like this photo the best.

There were a bunch of widgeons out on the mudflats as well.

A closer photo.

Finally I made it to Westchester Lagoon in time for dinner.

Although it sprinkled on the way to the lake, the sky was brooding but there was no rain during the event.

I liked the moodiness of the mountains and clouds.

A Hudsonian Godwit rests on one of the two small islands in Westchester Lagoon along with some Greater Scaup.

In a small slough connected to the lake I got confused for a while because I heard a shorebird calling loudly. I looked for the bird and saw this Lesser Yellowlegs in prime breeding plummage, but the calls I was hearing sounded nothing like the distinctive call of a yellowlegs. I showed this photo to the president of Anchorage Audubon, Mr. Whitekeys, who concurred that it was a Lesser Yellowlegs.

Then I went back to the little slough. The yellowlegs was gone, and the real caller was out in the open, a Solitary Sandpiper. See the green grass I talked about in the beginning of this post?

Last summer I got my first photos of a Solitary Sandpiper at nearby Spenard Crossing. These photos are much better. I wonder if it could be the same bird?

As I returned home at the end of an enjoyable evening, I saw this moose nearby. Last week I saw the usual nieghborhood moose that I see from time to time. The mother and her yearling male calf.

I wondered when she would drive her calf off and give birth to a new one. Just about 3 days ago the local news reported that a cow moose with two newborn calfs had been shot in a nearby nieghborhood. It had allegedly been threatening children, and I feared it might be my moose.

You can see by the notched left ear that this is the same cow moose that I last photographed at Christmas time. Judging by her scars, she has had a rough winter. The yearling calf was nowhere to be seen. I wonder if she has a newborn calf hiding somewhere nearby?

True to her usual calm temperament, she ignored my presense completely.

eBIRD and the Life List

Way back in 1977, I was serving as a missionary in a hellhole in the jungles of Nayarit, Mexico called Santiago Ixcuintla. I hated the town, but loved the jungle. There were many wild parrots and flashy birds like Magpie Jays and Kiskadees. I was very curious to know the names of these birds .

A few months later I was in Guadalajara where I found the above book in a bookstore. This is now one of my prized possessions. As you can see it has seen some use over the years.

At first I was overwhelmed by the myriad of similar-looking birds that were depicted in the book. I only paid attention to the most colorful, or distinctive birds in the book.

The idea of going out birdwatching was preposterous to me. I did'nt even own a pair of binoculars. I did start becoming familiar with the birds that I saw often like Groove-billed Anis and Great-tailed Grackles.

When my mission was over and I moved to Lakeside, Arizona I stumbled into another bookstore and purchased the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Western North America. I borrowed my father's binoculars and went down to the local lake to sort out the various species of ducks.

After I figured them out I moved on to other bird families like woodpeckers and raptors. One day it occured to me to try and figure out all of the bird species that I was seeing. I bought a pair of binoculars of my own and although I did'nt even know it at the time, I was now a birder.

That old field guide fell apart many years ago. Now I have a newer version, autographed by Roger Tory himself.

I was a serious birder for seven or eight years before I crossed paths with another birder. That came about when a friend of mine showed me an article about an upcoming Audubon Christmas Bird Count she had found in the newspaper. I contacted them and joined in the bird count. What a surprize it was to me to find other birders living in the area.

My father often talked about the novel he was going to write when he retired. Upon his retirement, my sister bought him a journal to write in. When my father died I came across this journal amoung his belongings. He had not written one word.

The Audubon society stressed the importance of keeping records of bird sightings. I decided that using my father's old journal would be a good way to keep track of what I was seeing. December 1987 was when I participated in my first Christmas Bird Count, the Timber Mesa Circle. I was assigned to a team consisting of myself, and Bob and Lorreta Pena. We were told to cover the area all around the nearby town of Show Low, where my brother still lives.

You can see the list of what we saw above. We counted individuals of each species as well. In 2004 I went back and tried to flesh out some of the details.

Back in those days I was very active and enthusiastic about listing what birds I was seeing. Unfortunately I did'nt bother making other pertinent notes like behavior, habitat, weather conditions, sexes, age etc.

Eventually I learned that many birders kept a tally of all the birds they had seen called a life list. I started mine in January of 1991. The birds marked in yellow are the birds I saw in the United States.

By the time I went to South Africa last year, my life list filled up the journal even onto the back cover. I've run out of room to add more birds. What a tradgedy it would be if something were to happen to this book.

Along comes eBIRD to the rescue. A week ago I attended the Matsu Bird Club's monthly meeting where eBIRD was the topic of the main program. I thought it was going to be a very dull topic but was in for a big surprize.

eBIRD, http://www.ebird.org/, is basically a warehousing of all bird knowledge. They gather results from CBC's, Breeding Bird Surveys, Government and University research etc. One of the most important aspects of it is the contribution of amatuer birders.

They want all of your, and my records. Everything we got. They use this information to look at bird populations from every possible perspective. For example they can look at a particular species like Ovenbird, and create a moving range map that follows their annual movements in great detail. They can pinpoint exactly what habitat the birds utilize, and follow population trends over time. This is one scenario of many that eBIRD looks at.

eBIRD has good information about the eastern United States, but need more information about the rest of the world.

What they do for birders like me is organize our individual lists and let us view our own records from numerous statistical models.

If I lose my book, it will live on in perpetuity. I get to compare my records with what others are seeing in the same areas etc.

The problem for me is that I have so many old bird lists that it will take many months of tedious work to transfer them to eBIRD. This all may be boring but it represents a great leap of scientific progress. Check it out for yourself.

Some Exciting New Arrivals

Last evening was the nicest day of the year so far. I know I just posted some new artwork yesterday but I want to put up some of the photos from yesterday's walk along the coastal trail.

I would trade all the regular migrant shorebirds for this one bird in the photo above. It may not be much to look at, but I have only seen a handful of Wandering Tattlers in my life. It's been about a decade since I've seen one, and never along the Anchorage Coastal Trail.

This Wandering Tattler was foraging along the muddy banks of Fish Creek, just south of Westchester Lagoon. This is the only tattler that I have been able to photograph. Too bad the light was so harsh.

Another new arrival. There were a number of Hudsonian Godwits like these two courting birds. There were several Whimbrels and yellowlegs as well.

There were four Sandhill Cranes but only one that was close to the trail.

The coastal trail swarmed with noisy people and dogs, but this crane appeared to be unconcerned about them.

These are the best Sandhill Crane photos that I have been able to get. Once again it's a shame that the light was so harsh in the late afternoon sunshine.

There were still Green-winged Teal in the same pond where I photographed them before. The little pond was right next to where the Sandhill Crane foraged, and just north of Fish Creek.

Right below Westchester Lagoon, the Gadwalls were still in their little pond.

These are the best Gadwall photos that I have been able to get as well.

There was some Muskrat love goin on in the same pond as the Gadwalls, although I could only get one to pose for me.

I dont know if Muskrats ever dry their fur out completely. These are the best photos I have of them also.

Although it's a blurry photo, I like this Arctic Tern in flight.

My first Shovelers of the Spring were on Westchester Lagoon.

Buffleheads were still on the lake as well.

Some New Artwork

So far, Sea Otters and puffins have been a sure sell for me in Gary's gallery, The Sea Lion, in Homer Alaska. No matter how badly I paint them, I have sold every one that I have sent to the gallery. I think Sea Otters are pretty cool, but to me they are a boring subject to paint. It has been very difficult for me to come up with an interesting composition with them. I already forgot the name of this 8x10" painting.

As you can see from these two Sea Otter paintings, I have been in a bit of a creative slump since my return from Uganda. This is a larger painting, 12x16". I forget the name of this one as well.

Although I have painted many puffins, they have all been Tufted Puffins. This is the first Horned Puffin painting I can remember doing. It looks terrible to me. I'm almost certain that it will sell anyway. It's another 8x10" painting.

Normally I sketch out the basic elements of a painting before applying paint with a brush. With this 4x6" miniature I just started painting without even knowing what animal I was going to paint. The whole thing only took an hour or so to paint. I am satisfied with how it turned out.

Things started to come together creatively with this, 9x12" Goshawk painting. I will probably make a few adjustments with it. The angle of the bird's legs looks wrong to me. The tree could use some work as well.

Life in the Clouds, 16x20". Finally, I feel like I'm almost back on top of my game. The actual painting looks so much better than the photo. It is a pair of Plate-billed Mountain Toucans in the Andean cloud forest of western Ecuador.

The idea I had in my head was very different and I suffered some frustration that I could'nt get the painting to look as good as I wanted it to look. That is the way it goes with most of my paintings. Now I'm off to the coastal trail to see what has just showed up from the south.