Whinchat

Today I had the opportunity to sketch a sweet little Whinchat. It was flying from a tree to another, and finally stayed for a while singing in a bare tree. The cloud formations behind it were quite special, but unfortunately I couldn't quite capture them in my gouache painting of the little Whinchat.

The Whinchat surprised me with its vocal abilities: I'd never have imagined it could have such a variety of sounds included in its song. Definitely one of my favorite singers!

Little Tern

I've been learning to use gouache for the past week or so, and at the moment I'm enjoying using this kind of paint a lot. Today I ended up painting a little tern I observed and sketched yesterday. At first it was just flying around fishing enthusiastically. Finally it decided to have a bath and then do some preening on the shore.

There's something wrong with the wing and the wing feathers. I'll have to pay more attention on how the wing folds next time I get to observe a preening tern.

Phalaropes!

Red-necked Phalaropes are such cute things, so I was more than happy, when I got to scetch them through a friends telescope for a while on Monday. The painting I did based on the scetches and checking color pattenrs and details from photos.

A Phalarope running on sand was a new sight to me. There were 5 of them scurrying arond among the gulls. Eventually some of them decided to give us a swimming performance, swirling in water in their trademark manner.

Summer!

It's actually been pretty quiet lately. The summer is finally here for good, the birds are nesting, and I'm trying to get used to the idea that I'm spending my summer here in the city where I study, not at my parents' place. Thus, this year I'll have different species keep me company than last year. Here's a stonechat from a week or so back. Maybe soon I'll have a chance to spend some (quality) time with Great crested grebes (the two little lakes near by are full of them).

Something different

It's not all birds, though... I almost panicked, when I found a cute hedgehog and realised I'd left my camera home. Then I remembered I did have pen and paper. So I sat down on the ground beside the terrified little thing and started scetching. After a while the hedgy decided I wasn't dangerous, took its nose out of the leaves and started snuffling around.

Wolves are very dear to me. I've loved them for long, and it's the animal I know best - information- and illustrationwise.

This one is made based on memory. It might not be perfect, but I'm happy with it, considering that I haven't been doing that many wolves lately.

Terek's Sandpiper!

Terek's sandpiper is another rarity I've been lucky enough to see. A friend of mine called me on the phone: "Guess what I've got right in front of me?" "Well?" "A pair of Terek's Sandpipers!" You can imagin I was out of the bookstore and on my way pretty fast.

I made scetches of the birds later on, using a color pencil (light blueish gray) and found it to be a wonderful scetching tool.

Also did some scetces of other waders.

Back to the present

Since the Smew is such a shy bird, I never imagined I'd get a good chance to see, let alone scetch one from close distance. Yet miracles do happen. Little did I know what I'd find, when I decided to visit the corner of a nearby lake one morning. A beautiful male smew, and definitely at scetching distance. Thus I started filling pages in my small A5 size scetchbook (wishing I'd had had the bigger one with me).

Later in the evening during choir practice I had a chance to do some more scetching, memory based. It was quite exciting to realize, that after having done so much field scetching, I could actually remember the color patterns still in the evening.

The Smew had a huge crush on a female Golden eye and was enthusiastically chasing off male Golden eyes. The sight was quite comical, since the Smew is noticeably smaller than the Golden eyes, yet managed to chase three of them off at best.

The love struck Smew wasn't its shy own self, but instead forgot to watch out (or I managed to stay still enough), since at closest the beauty was only at the distance of around 10 meters. Just think of it! Every single detail stood clearly out in the soft morning light.

More older stuff

Here's still some older scetches from winter 2006-2007. The nuthatch was an exciting lifer, ands such a cutie, I did loads of drawings of it. The mistle thrush was drawn based on memory of a picture taken by a fellow birdwatcher.

The Black-throated thrush, another lifer, for which I had to walk quite a distance. But the bird was most definitely worth the walk.

Dipper must be one of my favorite birds. This drawing is again drawn memory based of a picture.

I'm a huge fan of woodpeckers, the Three toed being one of my favorites. This one was preening and drumming in a dry tree.

The beginning - Azure tit

Welcome to my very first blog!

I've been drawing ever since I was just a little girl. Some of my very first scetches include a whole page full of birds. Though during elementary school and junior high my main drawing objects were wolves, foxes, dogs and cats, I've now started to return to my roots - to drawing birds.

During Fall 2006 I started to get more serious about birdwatching. As I realised I didn't have a camera to record my sightings visually, I had only one option left - to draw down what I saw. And when an Azure tit appeared in my home city (a very rare migrant from Russia), I was desparate to have some kind visual record of my encounter with the blue and white little fellow.

I didn't have much of a chance to make field scetches, but later on I did some based on memory, and checking the color patterns from a bird guide. Since I wasn't satisfied, I moved on to do some drawings based on actual pictures, and after that took out my memories again and did a couple of drawings and paintings.

The Azure liked to hang around in bushes. It was December, and the seashore was dull gray and cold, but the little thing was happily hopping around in the bushes, brightening up the day of those, who got to see it. I've wanted to see one ever since 1999 when I first saw a picture of one. Thus the encounter was extra special for me.

It was quite a sight to have my "dream bird" right in front of me at a close distance, calmly minding its own business. It flew to the top of the reed...and slid down. Flew up again...and slid down, obviously having (almost as much) fun as the one observing it. The Azure is still the most special rarity I've seen, and no doubt will remain the dearest.