Category: Birds

Battling Blackbirds

blackbirds

8.35 a.m.: Two male blackbirds have decided that the border between their territories runs along the narrow gap between a yellow grit hopper and a red recycling bin at the top end of the Health Centre car park.

First one hops forward, head held high, breast puffed out in ritualised belligerence, then it crosses the invisible line and its rival retaliates, driving it back.

This continues for a minute with the cut-and-thrust rhythm of a closely fought tennis tournament until they meet head-to-head at the half-way point and the contest erupts vertically into the air, the blackbirds lashing out with their feet like a pair of heraldic beasts.

writing about blackbirds

This morning, in the short time I had available, I decided to write rather than draw, so my drawing of the rival blackbirds is from a sketchbook from March 1999, which I wrote up, using pretty much the same phrases as I did today, in my Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, www.wildyorkshire.co.uk

The rival blackbirds sketch appeared in my published sketchbook/nature journal Rough Patch, a sketchbook from the wilder side of the garden, published in 2005 (and still available, see link below!).

Link

Neighbours, Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Thursday, 4th March, 1999

Rough Patch

Rough Patch, a sketchbook from the wilder side of the garden

Feathers

feathers

Canada goose, mallard and what may be crow feathers which we picked up in the Deer Park at Wentworth Castle this morning.

Bird Life

bird sketches
shoppers

Middlestown, 10.20 am:Forty or more starlings wheel about overhead and a female blackbird with food in her beak calls in alarm. Possible dangers for her chicks include a black cat which has just walked into the hedgerow and a crow keeping watch from the roof of the health centre.

The shoppers and the mating sparrows were drawn at Birstall.

Hogweed drawn at Newmillerdam on Monday.
Published
Categorized as Birds, Urban

Nuthatch Nest

Nuthatch nest

We watch a pair of nuthatches feeding their chicks in a nest hole high up in a willow. They arrive with food every five or ten minutes and usually collect a faecal sack which they swoop down amongst the shrubs away from the nest to dispose of.

nuthatch

The female is noticeably lighter and more silver grey than the male which has a slate grey back. At one stage, after looking into the hole briefly, she pauses motionless on the right hand edge of the tree near the hole, facing downwards, with an item of food (perhaps a. It turns out that the male was in the nest hole and when he pops out a minute or two later with a faecal sack in his beak, she goes in.

Our friends John and Heather Gardner have been following progress on this nest watching the parent birds carefully blocking the natural cavity in the willow with beakfuls of mud. At this stage of a the process as soon as the nuthatches left the tree a blue tit would fly in the to investigate the hole. The nuthatches have seen off the competition.

Nuthatches nested in the same cavity last year but the mud barrier needed replacing after the winter.

Above the nest hole a hoof fungus projects like a canopy over a door.

Oak, red horse chestnut and wych elm seeds, Rhyhill.

The Owl Experience

owls
Barn owl, tawny owl, little owl and Indian eagle owl breast feather.

At a Yorkshire Owl Experience at Horbury Library we were introduced to Amba, as scops owl from Central Africa, and Caspa, an Indian eagle owl who was in the process of moulting but I drew three of our native owls: barn, tawny and little owl (Jack, Dusty and Charlie).

owl sketches

Link

Yorkshire Owl Experience

Small Sketchbook

sketchbook

Recent sketches from my pocket sketchbook, colour mostly added later. Sometimes I’ll take a photograph for colour reference but with these I’ve added the colour as I remember it.

tree and duck sketches
I checked out my memory of the colour of the ducks in a field guide.

Ducks and Doves

mallard sketches

A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.

I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.

bird sketches

I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.

stock dove

The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.

Gull Feather

Sallow catkins and common reed

Thanks to a sharp-eyed birdwatcher we met at RSPB St Aidan’s this morning we’re on to species number 74 on our year list: a common scoter, a black drake, not much bigger than the black-headed gull dotted around it on the lagoon.

gull feather

Plenty of noise from the black-headed gullery in the centre of the reserve.

gull feather quill drawing
Having tried dipping the gull’s feather in ink, I’ll stick to goose feather quills for drawing.
Published
Categorized as Birds Tagged