And Now, Back to the Art

Now that I'm home from Texas, I'm finishing up some new art for the Auburn Old Town Gallery. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm one of the featured artists for May and have been working on a number of new critter paintings on the Art Boards surface.

These are two that I had finished before we left, but hadn't had time to scan. They're both done in ink, watercolor & color pencil. The rabbit doesn't have much ink-work - just the eyes.


"Purple Pug", 4" x 4", Mixed Media on Art Board. Find "Purple Pug" items in my Zazzle Shop.


"Mr. Personality", 4" x 4", Mixed Media on Art Board

I always have a heck of a time capturing all the detail on paintings with large areas of white. The whites get "blown out" and lose some of the detail. I have a good scanner too, but there's only so much it can capture. And there's only so much time I want to spend fighting with the resulting image - on this one, I darkened the white areas just a touch so they wouldn't be so glaring, but beyond that, sometimes I have to throw in the towel and say, "the original is much better than the scan". Fortunately, I don't have to resort to that too often!

Here are the reference photos:


I must mention that "Mr. Personality" is Snoopy, a rex rabbit, and he belongs to Dianne Van de Carr, a friend and fellow Old Town Gallery member. Snoopy is quite the character and this is my third artful rendition of him.

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Birding in Texas - Days 5 & 6

Here's the final post for our trip. We're home now, and although we had a great time, I'm glad to be back on familiar turf. We were in Texas for six days, but really only had 4 days to bird - days 1 & 6 were travel days. For the trip, we tallied 158 bird species, 26 of which were warblers.

We also saw four reptile species: Alligator, Red-eared Slider (turtle), Water Moccasin (see my Day 4 post for a photo) and Anole (lizard).

Surprisingly, not much in the way of mammals - a couple of Eastern Fox Squirrels, some cows, horses and a couple of dogs was about it. I was disappointed not to see armadillos (road-kill or otherwise). We did see a road-kill young pig though. That was odd, it looked like a wild/feral pig.

On day 5, we stopped at some rice fields to look for shorebirds which can be plentiful on the mud of the drained fields. We weren't disappointed and were fortunate to find a Hudsonian Godwit - another life bird for both of us. The birds were too far away to take photos, but our spotting scope provided excellent viewing.

Then it was on to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge to find alligators, shorebirds and waterfowl. It was pretty quiet at Anahuac since much of the water-filled areas were temporarily dry, but we did see some nice shorebirds in one of the areas that was ponded and quite a few alligators in the main canal.


This large gator was basking on the edge of a canal that runs throughout Anahuac.

About to call it a day and heading to the Bed and Breakfast to check in, we stopped at a marshy area to look for shorebirds. We were fortunate enough to see a Clapper Rail, and John actually managed to get some photos.


Rails rarely come out of the marsh vegetation. You can hear them, but seeing them, much less photographing them is a different story.

On our last day, we ate breakfast and heard stories of Hurricane Ike with our B & B owner/hostess, Carole. She was unable to evacuate and spent a harrowing few days trapped in the B&B. The B&B suffered major damage, but it's almost back to where it was in 2008. Sadly, a large number of the homes on the Texas coast are no more. The destructive force of the hurricane was tremendous and hard for us to comprehend. You can learn more about Ike's fury in this episode of Storm Stories.

After breakfast, we headed toward Point Bolivar to catch the ferry to Galveston, stopping at a few spots along the way to see if we could find any new shorebirds.


I took this photo of one of the other ferries from our ferry.


Laughing Gulls wait at the ferry docks and fly along with it, hoping for kindly passengers to give them food. I was eating a piece of bread in the car and this gull landed on the railing 3 feet from me. I'm sorry, but I didn't share.

We added one more species to our trip list on the drive from Galveston to the airport in Houston, a familiar and handsome raptor - a Red-shouldered Hawk.

I've uploaded more Texas trip photos than what I posted on my blog, see them all on Flickr.

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Birding in Texas - Day 4

Today we headed back to Sabine Woods since we had such a great time there yesterday. Unfortunately, it was much quieter today - still good, but much less bird activity. We had 8 new species for the day and at least one life bird for me. Cerulean Warbler is a life bird for sure, but a few others may have been. I'm not all that great at keeping track of my life list, so American Golden Plover, Philadelphia Warbler and Gray-cheeked Thrush were probably life birds for me. At the very least I got better looks at these species today than I have in the past. Another notable bird was the Ovenbird - just because I like them. They skulk around on and near the ground, not as striking as many warblers, but still lovely.


Ovenbirds are tough to photograph because they skulk around on the ground in the underbrush.


Larry, Moe & Curly - three of 11 mottled duck ducklings in Sabine Woods.


Black-throated Green Warbler. These handsome warblers were plentiful during our first day in Sabine Woods. John got better photos of them today.


"What large nostrils you have!" Cattle Egret and cow. Photo taken on Hwy 87 near Sabine Woods.


Cottonmouth (aka Water Moccasin) snakes are excellent swimmers. This one was swimming toward us, we were very glad that it changed course and headed for the opposite shore.

I've posted more photos from Day 4 on Flickr.

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Birding in Texas - Day 3

A quick update for today's birding adventures. We spent most of the day at Sabine Woods, a Texas Ornithological Society sanctuary, although we did take a short trip to McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge.

We saw 42 new species today, bringing our total for the trip (so far) to 129 species.
We saw 25 warbler species today - an excellent number. They're tough to photograph (even with our big lens) and most of our day was spent warbler watching, so I have just three photos to share. One of the warblers was a life bird for me: Black-throated Blue Warbler.


We saw this Canada Warbler at Sabine Woods.


This Summer Tanager discovered a bee hive in this tree in Sabine Woods.


A Tricolored Heron in breeding plumage, note the bright blue bill. Photo taken at McFaddin NWR.

Birds of note:
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler (a personal favorite)
Worm-eating Warbler (another personal fave)
Magnolia Warbler
American Redstart
Blue Grosbeak
Painted Bunting (amazing Skittle-colored birds)
Dickcissel (just because I need this word in my blog post)

It was such a great day in Sabine Woods that we're heading back there tomorrow.

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Birding in Texas - Day 2

John and I are back in Texas on a birding trip. I've been twice before, the last time in 2003, John's third trip was in 2005. Day 1 was a travel day and we got in just before dark, so we didn't see much. Our first bird sighted was at the Houston Hobby airport - a great-tailed grackle. Other than many more grackles, we saw a few house sparrows on the first day - not much to get excited about.

Day 2 was much more interesting. We visited the Boy Scout Woods and Smith Oaks sanctuaries in High Island, the Rollover Pass area and Bolivar Flats.


I fell in love with Least Terns today - they're small, they're chattery and just plain cute. This one's doing a wing stretch. Photo taken at Bolivar Flats


Great-tailed Grackles are everywhere! They're also loud and annoying, yet amusing. Photo taken at the rookery in Smith Oaks, High Island

We saw 87 species today - one of them was a "life bird" for both of us - an American Oystercatcher. It was fair day for warblers - which is a big reason for coming to the TX coast in April. It's migration time and birds stop along the wooded areas of the coast to rest and refuel after flying across the gulf of Mexico before continuing northward. We saw 7 warbler species today.

Notable species for the day (in no particular order):
American Oystercatcher
Piping Plover
Red Knot
Black-throated Green Warbler
Northern Parula Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Scarlet Tanager
Orchard Oriole


John took this photo of a stunning male Scarlet Tanager. We saw him in Boy Scout Woods on High Island.

I've posted more photos from Day 2 on Flickr.

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"Mini Moo"

A quick post for today - a new miniature painting of a young steer.

The last time I ordered Art Boards direct from the manufacturer, they sent a couple of small 2" x 3" sample boards. One was a linen canvas (which I'll give to another artist who can use it, since I don't paint on linen), the other was hot-pressed watercolor paper. I've been using the Art Boards cold-pressed paper, which has a more textured finish. The hot-pressed is very smooth. I looked through my photo archives for a critter that would work as a mini 2" x 3" painting and found this one:



Which led to this:

"Mini Moo" - 2" x 3" - Ink, Watercolor & Color Pencil

And here's a detail:

I used black ink, then maroon, purple, blue and pink shades of watercolor & color pencil.

This painting sold at the Auburn Old Town Gallery.

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Ducklings!

It's hatching time for wood ducks! We have three nest boxes on our property near our pond and each year at least one of them is deemed suitable by the nesting wood ducks. Yesterday when I was out in the paddock cleaning up after the horse, I realized that one of the wood ducks had been calling from the pond for quite some time. They're very shy ducks, so they usually call (a whistly, squawking, plaintive sound) and then fly off. But this one wasn't going anywhere. That's when I figured out it must be a hen calling to her ducklings to come out of the nest box. You can hear the sound here (it's toward the end of the recording).

She already had 3 little ones with her and I could hear at least 2 more peeping from inside the box. I had hoped to get some photos of them leaving the nest, but even though I checked many times throughout the day, I missed the action. Late in the day, I saw two lone ducklings cruising around the pond.

A few years ago, I was able to see ducklings leaving the same nest box and managed to take a few photos. See this blog post.



I'm not sure what happened to the hen and 5 ducklings from yesterday, but today, a hen was back on the pond, calling incessantly. Since I also saw her on the ground near the same nest box, I assume it was the hen from yesterday. I could hear at least 2 more ducklings in the box, but they never came out on their own. So when John got home this evening, we decided to intervene and release the little ones from the box before it got dark - so they could safely find the hen. John opened the box from the side to reveal two adorable ducklings. We put them in a 5-gallon bucket so I could take photos. Then we each took one and released them at the edge of the pond. They waddled into the water and swam off, not completely sure what to do, but peeping all the while. The hen continued calling and, within about 15 minutes, we watched them meet up and swim to the safety of the cattails at the back of the pond.

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