Bugs at the Birdie Playground

Much like a small child, my delightful and demanding Blue-crowned Conure loves to be taken on little outings to her closest playground, so she can climb and scream and destroy things to her heart's content. In my bird's case, this playground is the crepe myrtle tree in our garden. It's parrot safe (trees, though they may seem peaceful, can really be dastardly villains), and it's close to the house, so pretty safe for her and pretty convenient for the human who has to watch over her. Because, of course, she can't be left unsupervised. She'll start screaming her distress call the moment she's left alone anyway. We tried to take her on a walk once, thinking she might enjoy seeing some sights, and had to turn back because she was terrified of the mail boxes. If you have a small child, I hope she's slightly less fearful.

"Play it safe" is her bird way.

Other things that are very scary and alarming and have to either be attacked or fled from: the UPS truck; any unusual sort of car, like maybe just a color she hasn't seen before, especially scary if it decides to park across the street from us; unfamiliar cats; bowls from the cabinet; the pen attached to the fridge for writing on the grocery list; boxes that were not present in a room the day before; nail polish; bandages; any bird over a certain size flying over a certain height in the sky; plastic bags of any sort, but especially the big black trash bags.

Things she finds lovely and enjoyable, but are actually more dangerous than the cardboard box on the counter: dogs, the bigger and the barkier, the better.

Given the list (ever-growing) of strange things that terrify her - and hey, parrots are prey animals, I can't blame her - watching her on the "playground" is not just about watching out for predatory birds that might take her as a snack, or making sure she doesn't get caught by a gust of wind and fly off: it's also watching for the UPS truck. Or anything else that might set off an instantaneous panic attack.

You also have to keep up some verbal feedback. "Yip?" "Yip." "Ruff?" "Ruff." She wants to know you're paying attention, and engaged in this super-fun tree climbing time. You also have to look at her every now and then. Don't look at her for too long, and she'll think you're not paying attention, in which case she'll start making distress calls. You'll also be surprised at how quickly she can climb through the tangled branches, and just how invisible she becomes in the green foliage. If something happens, you need to know where she is anyway.

(and yes, my poor birdie plucks her feathers, which is why she's so bare in places; we're still trying strategies to solve the problem.)

There's also the odd "bird stuck in a tree" phenomena, where she climbs too high, doesn't understand the concept of climbing down, and proceeds to freak out because she's "stuck". If she does climb too high, preparations have to be made to get her down, including extra long sticks and possible assistance from other family members. We had to lure her down with a pop tart once, but we won't talk about that. (I think she's learned her lesson now and it's thankfully been years since we had to use that trick. If only she'd learn now that the bowls for my cereal are not deadly at all).

So, birdie playground time basically requires someone to stand and crane their neck up at a tree for up to an hour, armed with an arsenal of retrieval sticks. Meanwhile the bird has the time of her life, tearing off leaves, clambering around, sunbathing, chewing sticks, hanging from branches, looking at people or dogs in their yards across the street and saying "ruff" to them.

This is cute for a while but pretty soon your neck starts to hurt and it's kinda boring. Trying to read isn't that great between having to look up all the time and being interrupted by persistent "ruffs". Any work that requires consistent concentration is kinda a no-go. The bird wants all of your consistent concentration. So looking for bugs and stuff is kinda the best option.

Such as this fine fellow. They're everywhere. They fly with a giant buzz from leaf to side of your house to wherever else they like to hang out. I don't know what they are, which is terrible. I wish the focus of this picture was better, but you can see this one's got its proboscis mouth thing stuck into the leaf!

I found another one, very close by.

And look who else I found, peeking out from beneath the weird sun face that came with the house? A Green Anole, blending well with the house.

My cats are frequent company during birdie playground time, and Mr. Kitteh always likes to sit like this.

This little orange ladybug was trying to hide from the camera on my hibiscus plant.

Now those are all things I found on a playground run back in November. What follows are some things I discovered on a slightly more exciting day in early January.

I'm not kidding when I say that these bugs are everywhere! They're a pretty reliable find. Now the ones from November did look slightly different, but the overall form is the same, so I don't know if these are different species or what: I'm still totally clueless, I don't know what they are, I'll find out someday. And yes, it's as big as it looks: an easy two inches long, three across with the width of its legs accounted for. When you see these flying through the air, you get out of the way.

Now, bored as I am looking after my cute bird in the tree, I pick up a curling dead oak leaf that had been sitting on my weird giant leafed tropical plant (I'm not a botanist). Lo and behold, look what rolled out of it, to my enormous surprise:

A much smaller one of these buggys, only about an inch or so long! I suppose it was hiding or napping inside the leaf, maybe.

I left the buggy alone, put the leaf back, and slowly, slowly, the little buggy crawled back, until eventually it had disappeared back into the leaf from whence it came. Such an exciting story!

Meanwhile, Merle's doing great:

 

 

Cedar Waxwing songbirds are still around, going "see see see see" as they browse the neighborhood. I also hear one of the neighborhood's Barred Owl's rising early, with those booming musical whoooos, always a delight. The usual gang of Blue Jays is hanging out, and some sort of chickadee or titmouse is making a fuss over something. I'm busy examining what's happening on a branch of my hibiscus plant.

One of the flowers is withering. This wingless wasp, which does look very much like a large ant, investigates the blossom. I have a healthy respect for these fellows after one of them somehow managed to get on my face while I was in a car and stung me right next to my eye. It hurts, and I would recommend avoiding the experience.

A quick glimpse to the underside of the plant reveals a huge number of what I would guess to be aphids, accompanied by a ladybug (same color as the flower), and multiple wingless wasps, all of which I hope are feasting on these little beasts, since I would guess they're responsible for the flower's wilt. It's quite the congregation, and I was excited to have discovered them all! This is the first time I've witnessed such an infestation on one of these flowers. The hibiscus plant, in this current month of April, is blooming insanely wonderfully with about twelve flowers, none of which seem aphid affected at all.

Don't mess with these guys.

Another event of the day was that the holly plant had its little flowers, and the bees were going crazy over them. Berries were out in full, too.

This plant is mainly notable only because the bees like its flowers, various birds like to hide in it (Mockingbirds especially), and lizards clamber through it. My bird wants to clamber through it too, but the leaves have sharp points and it's probably not parrot safe, so her access is denied.

That's all I've got: some bugs, some birds. It's an exciting world out there, and I'm not often bored.

Family Photos, Birdventures: El Paso

Consider this my photo album for our Spring Break family trip to enjoy the desert scenery of El Paso, TX. As of this writing, we still have a few more hours of adventure left here before heading back home.

As it stands now, I've seen three new bird species here in El Paso: Crissal Thrasher, Bufflehead duck, and Ladder-backed Woodpecker, which makes for a somewhat unlikely but definitely charming trio! One of El Paso's most common birds is the White-winged Dove: they're all over the parking lots, city parks, and gardens. Great-tailed Grackles are here too, just like in Houston, but I notice that the calls they make sound pretty different from those of Houston Great-tails. Very exciting!

Weather has been clear and sunny the whole trip, with lows of 50 F overnight, raising through the morning to the 60s and 70s, reaching 80 at the peak hours of the afternoon. Usually there's a cool breeze, which is a definite help when it gets into the hottest part of the day.

I'll be going through photos in rough order of day and relative location, so stay tuned for the photographic tour.

Animal Gesture Drawings : July 23rd 2015

A major goal of mine is to squash any resistances I have toward drawing. Sometimes, I want to draw, but I'm reluctant to actually do it, because...drawing is hard? I'm allergic to emotion? I'll explode under all the self-inflicted pressure?? I will begin to feel that life is inevitably futile and sad??? Sure, sure, that all may be (just slightly) exaggerated, but - whatever the reasoning - sometimes I do avoid drawing, even when it feels like something I ought to do.

But in order to achieve some greater ambitions, such as drawing wildlife in the field that will never, ever stand still for you, being much better at drawing is a requirement. Speaking of wildlife again, drawing not just quickly, but precisely, would be my lofty goal.

I would like drawing to feel as natural and unimpeded as possible. I think if it ever truly feels easy I might feel like I'm doing something wrong. But natural, quick, sharp, automatic, with less doubt, less "I'm not sure what I'm doing; this is a jumbled mess I can't make sense of; I hate this drawing and everything it stands for", would indeed be nice.

Top left two: 30 second sketches (peahen, kiwi). Right side four: 1 minute sketches (macaw, sparrow, dove, duckling). Bottom left: 10 minute macaw.  Sort-of center: 5 minutes each for goose and seagull.

That's where gesture drawing comes in! Practice, practice, practice. Quick sketches, always with a set timer, and hopefully I'll get into the habit of doing these more often than just once every blue moon, because it's an important exercise for me. Building comfort with drawing, more confidence with skill, and more familiarity with anatomy, form, shape, shading, style. Trying to build myself a little no-pressure free-draw zone while still saying "Hey. Get good."

More 30 second birds surrounding a 5 minute horse, 5 minute squirrel, and 10 minute kangaroo. Yes the kangaroo was in a weird as heck position with strange perspective. It was not trying to be handsome or sensible like the other animals.

Helping a lot to make this practice easy is a neat figure and gesture drawing tool completely free on the internet: http://artists.pixelovely.com/. I love that they have animal drawing among the choices, and that you can customize the kinds of animals you want, focusing on birds, mammals, or anything from bunnies to tarantulas. I enjoy doing the "class style" program with a variance of sketch times.

Having a timer really helps cut back on the existential despair. Although there's still a lot of internal screaming and frustration words on those thirty second drawings, that's just part of the thrill. The joy of art, I should say.

My 30 second and 1 minute mammal sketches are not pictured here, because most are nigh-indiscernible and my brother made fun of them. Good exercises, not always pretty to look at it, not always something I'm gonna want to see again in ten years.

My brother did not make fun of this parrot, the way he made fun of the poor squiggle cats.

There's an awful lot of mental calculation that goes into drawing and it's only consistent practice over time that's going to improve that. You have to learn how to look, and what to look for, to construct your drawing, and how to do all the proper proportion checking and re-checking that will eventually become automatic. I still have to catch myself when I automatically draw a wing at the wrong angle, and that's just one example.

Five minutes was not enough time to draw that entire horse and all its legs. Not with my limited familiarity with entire horse and weird flailing leg anatomy.

Given that my ultimate goal is to draw things that move, well enough that I can capture things like personality, detailed body language, accurate identifiers, and behavior, the more automatic all the basic processes can be, the better. I want no hesitancy when it comes to putting pencil to paper.

Spring Anole Photoshoot

My pet bird Merle the Blue-crowned Conure, and a Green Anole lizard!

I'm sure the lizards in the yard are sick of me. I'm always saying hello and asking for their photo and their autograph and if I can name a child after them and if they'll hang out with me and be best friends forever and then I take their beleaguered judgmental stares as consent. 

Yes I am guilty of bothering the wildlife.

So handsome!

This rain gutter is popular, it's true. Prime lizard territory.

This one has a weird ridge of skin on the neck! I've never seen that before! Not sure what's up with that.

We all know these lizards are the best. Even if we don't admit it, we all know it's true, deep in our hearts.

I caught him showing off his throat flap, hooray!

I hope y'all like lizards as much as I do 'cause I'm not even done yet. Let's show some other animals for a bit though:

How do ya like these animals??

Enough of that, though, there are more lizards to see!

Spring time? Lizard time!

Lizards, lizards, everywhere

Another picture of my bird, because why not:

And, because I have (most sadly!) run out of lizard pictures (but not lizards), we'll move on to a few things anoles might like to eat.

Like this cool beetle that landed on my hand. Very small! I like the colors. Skin looks weird close up, but I guess that's how bugs see it.

And of course I can't resist a prime oppurtunity for a mosquito photograph.

And this picture blurred but I like how it makes this small moth look really big and spooky! Up against the glass on a window of course.

Now we'll end on a *super ultra bonus!* picture:

This neat crab exoskeleton that I found at the nature center. It's the size of my hand, and it's so intact! It's much more common to see the smaller fiddler crabs than these bigger ones, so this was a cool find. I thought it was just a dead crab, but after taking this picture I've since found out that crabs shed their shells as they grow, so maybe it's just a molted exoskeleton?

Keep your eyes open for cool lizards, crabs, and birds! Spring is a great season for exciting (and accessible!) wildlife encounters. You never know where those lizards could be lurking.

Ring-necked Parakeets in watercolor

Step 1: sketchy-sketch.

Step 2: some vaguely parrot-shaped blobs of color.

Step 3: those parrots need some beaks and feet!

 

Step 4: and they need something to stand on, too, don't they?

Step 5: how about some lovely parrot eyes? And other important facial features, such as visible mouths and neck markings?

Step 6: What about details? Better wings, better feathers! The parrots demand them! Also more of a background, too!

Step 7: Ah, but we need more of a background than that! Something that seems a little more interesting, and a little less flat. And just a little bit more polish on those parrots so they stand out, the stars of the show.

That's it, that's the end! It's like magic. Parrots, suddenly, where there were no parrots before! Watercolor paints on watercolor paper, with some colored pencil work for the details, and a tiny bit of black ink for those parrot pupils.

My workspace

Why Ring-necked Parakeets? I kinda fell in love with them when I watched some really charming individual pet birds on YouTube. I was fascinated by how many of them seemed to really love stuffed animals - my parrot, a Blue-crowned Conure, has only ever had a very passing interest in them (she might bite them, or give them one kiss or a high-five if prompted, but that's it). They also have such sweet voices!

You can see from the videos that the captive birds come in a variety of colors, and you might be able to tell from the painting that I'm pretty fond of that pastel blue form.Wild birds are usually green, though you can see from photos like this that the green can include aspects of blue:

Photo from Wikipedia

Photo from Flickr

               
So, in short, I just think they're really charming, interesting, charismatic birds, which is why I wanted to paint some.