I'm quite well aquainted with the Black-throated Divers (such a beautiful bird), but before this summer I've never seen a single Red-throated diver close enough to be viewed with binoculars only (previous sightings were migrating and a Swarovski with 60x magnification was needed to determine the dots on the sky in the distance were actually Red-throated Ds). I didn't expect to see the divers at the small lake. I was just scetching a Wagtail, and just quickly skanned the lake to check if there'd be an Arctic Tern flying by. Instead, there were two Red-throated divers.
My notes in the scetch say that the weather was cloudy and somewhat rainy so the colors of the birds couldn't be seen very clearly, and that the RTDs look a lot more slender than the BTDs. On the right hand I've attempted to capture the action of diving, the slight jerk of the head that is very subtle but nevertheless it would be interesting to watch that in slow motion.
Here's also a Gyr falcon I drew with Derwent Drawing -pencils during my holiday.
It's a species I've never seen, but it's such a magnificent bird I couldn't resist the temptation of giving a try at drawing one. I know the back of the bird should be striped, the beak should be bigger and the look of it more fierce in general. I'll have to give it another try sometime. Or maybe I'll do a Peregrine in gouache - a falcon I've actually had the pleasure of seeing.
