Category: Birds

Hobby and Little Stint

reedbeds, St Aidan's

Dragonflies zoomed around us and rested briefly on the path as we made the full circuit of RSPB St Aidan’s reserve. They were flying high too and a hobby was making the most of it, arcing high above the reedbeds to catch and eat them on the wing.

A few spoonbills were resting amongst the reedbeds by one of the lagoons.

michaelmas daisy
Michaelmas Daisy and drone fly.

Alongside three ringed plovers on one of the lagoons was a little stint, a wader no bigger than a robin.

VR postbox

We took a break halfway around at the Rivers Meet Craft Cafe, crossing the railway at a level crossing by the former station and passing this Victorian postbox.

craft cafe
Craft Cafe
Mobile Haberdashery

Just in case you couldn’t find everything you needed in the craft shop at the Rivers Meet, the Mobile Haberdashery van had called.

old farm buildings
Redevelopment of old farm buildings, Methley.

Pond Cam

pond
house sparrow
House sparrow

We haven’t recorded a fox at the end of the garden on the trail cam for weeks now so, as we’ve recently trimmed back around the pond and scooped out the duckweed, I’ve set up my Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam there. This morning at 10 it recorded a dunnock (above) followed a few minutes later by a house sparrow.

greenfinch

Ten minutes earlier this greenfinch had been down at the pond’s edge.

greenfinch

It looks as if it’s drying itself off after bathing but, if it had been, the camera didn’t catch it. I need to clear out the last of the duckweed to give the birds better access.

At eleven o’clock yesterday the inevitable wood pigeon waddled by and a squirrel bounded along, slightly blurred on the photograph.

With a closer camera angle and a bit of stage management of duckweed and pebbles, this could be the perfect spot for a back garden stake-out.

Tufted Duck

tufted duck cartoon
poor duck

The last of the supporting players, the tufted duck is taking shape and I’ve made a start on the main character, the hungry duck.

Ode to a Duck shouldn’t take long to put together now that I’ve got all the elements together. The animation shouldn’t be much longer than 60 seconds.

Swan Screen Test

swan screen test

In my animation, the swan is anything but mute as it introduces my Ode to a Duck.

Character Animator

Having now produced several ‘puppets’ using the Adobe Character Animator template, I’m much more familiar with the basics and more confident that it will actually work. There are plenty of optional tweaks that I could introduce but for this animated cartoon I’ve stuck to face-on characters which don’t walk or fly about, basically they’re talking heads.

Bird Ballet

bird sketches

“Are they keeping still for you?” asks a passing dog-walker.

“Whenever you draw a duck, if you start when it’s facing that way, it turns the other way.”

Down at the duck pond in Thornes Park and what I really need to draw are Canada geese and swans but there are none about so I draw these balletic gulls and preening ducks.

bird sketches

All the work that I’ve been doing on animated cartoons makes me more aware of character and movement in birds, particularly ducks, but I realise that black-headed gulls and town pigeons could equally well have a cartoon to themselves.

Wood Pigeon Screen Test

wood pigeon cartoons

For his waddle-on cameo in my Ode to a Duck cartoon, the wood pigeon is supposed to be empathic and concerned rather than ranting and irate, but, if you’re familiar with wood pigeons you’ll know that they have a limited repertoire.

wood pigeon roughs

The line work was drawn in Lamy fountain pen in my sketchbook. I’ve combined two of my sketches and coloured them in Photoshop. I kept testing the Photoshop PSD file in Adobe Character Animator, to make sure things were turning out more or less as intended.

I haven’t added the blink yet, as I did for the squirrel this morning, but this character is evidently the unblinking sort.

Next up, a foraging moorhen . . .

Wood pigeon mouth positions
Wood pigeon mouth movements – and yes, I know that they don’t really have teeth! – drawn same size as my original sketch.

Spoonbill

bittern

On Friday at St Aidan’s we saw spoonbill, ruff, heron and bittern. A birdwatcher suggested that the adult spoonbills from the small colony at Fairburn Ings fly over to St Aidan’s to take a break from the juveniles.

As the ruff had a black bill, it was probably a female. We’re now into the autumn migration, so hopefully we’ll see a few more waders at the shallower ponds.

Designer Phragmites

Growing by watersides, reed canary-grass, Phalaris arundinacea, looks like a diminutive version of the common reed, Phragmites, and has been dubbed canal grass. At this time of year, some of the seedheads are flushed with purple, so it deserves its nickname of designer Phragmites.

Gipsywort

gipsywort
common blue

Growing alongside the Phalaris, gipsywort, Lycopus europaeus, which has been in herbal medicine and to produce a black dye.

There are dozens of dragonflies about and a few butterflies, including this common blue, taking a brief rest on the path.