Drama in the Pine Tree

Yesterday, I was grousing to my spouse that I haven't felt like I have had the time to just sit and notice, lately. I am a little irked that the hummingbird feeder is out. I’ve filled it 4 times (we don't fill it very full) and I have yet to see a hummingbird. Last year, there was time to slow down and notice. It was one of the few gifts of the pandemic. For various reasons, the pace of life is picking up and I don’t want to give up the noticing, but it takes time and I haven't found the right balance. 

This morning, I went out start watering the flower and garden beds, but before I started I decided to sit and notice. 

In our 70 year-old pine tree outside the back door, I’ve been hearing loud, slightly annoying chirps and since there is an active cardinal’s nest and a robin’s nest, it was time to stop and look. The chirps were especially loud and shrill this morning. While it was hard to zero in on the exact location of where they were originating from, it was on the side of the tree where the cardinal’s nest is located.  

I spotted one and later a second baby cardinal in the tree. I think they are called fledglings at this stage. They blend in amazingly well when they aren’t moving. It’s hard to get a good picture. The little ones are starting to hope around the tree and, occasionally sort of jump/fly from one branch to a slightly farther one, which made me tense up whenever they did this. Many years ago, we saw a male cardinal tending to a fledgling on the ground under the same tree and I know these youngins have a much better chance of survival if they don't fall out of the tree. 

What wasn’t hard to see was the pair tending to them. They seem to be everywhere all at once, so it was not surprising that they both look skinny and a tad ragged. 

There was a certain level of drama with the various activities of the adult and young cardinals, which spiked to 16 on a 10 point scale when a squirrel tried to navigate its way through the pine tree near the fledglings. Until I talked to my neighbor this morning, I wasn't aware that squirrels will eat young birds. 

If you have ever seen small birds run off a big raptor in the air it was a bit like that, but it happened in the confines of the pine tree. The male cardinal sounded and kept up a distress call which brought the female, who also started yelling at the offender, and they more or less attacked and herded the uncooperative squirrel away from the fledglings. It was quite a sight to see and was very loud. Not long afterwards, a robin and another bird tried to land near the fledglings, so there was a repeated and very loud enforcement of a "no go" zone.  Later, subsequent violations of the "no go" zone (no stopping or standing here, just move along) were much less violent and loud. 

When things settled down a bit, it was time for a little food for the babes.

I am so glad that I took the time this morning to experience this and also to write about it. It leaves me in a place where I feel more rested and ready to face a busy day than when I first woke up. 

Hello There

 Hello to my blog. I’ve missed you. 

In my time away, I have kept up with daily project work and I completed Suhita Shirodkar’s class. It covered a lot of ground in 4 sessions. That is not a criticism, although the leap in the 4th class was more than I was willing to do, so I did my own thing and did not turn in homework to be evaluated. 

I still have a long way to go with tackling figure drawing. Here are a couple of attempts from Suhita’s class when we were working from photos. These are all fairly small drawings and the point is to try to capture people in a sketchy type of way, but where there is also aliveness and a sense of movement. I found that I could start to work some things out if I practiced drawing the same person more than once. By the third try, I thought I was getting more believable posture and "movement".

I am starting to develop a dislike of feet, since I just can’t make out their shape. 

The leap in class 4 which I was just not prepared to make was trying to sketch an entire market scene from one of 6 phots that she provided from a trip to Barcelona. It was just too hard to figure out what to include, modify, how to represent everything and so on, so I just didn’t do it. Instead, I did play around with trying to capture and fit in just the people relative to each other in some scenes as a way to push myself a bit. Here’s an example of that. 

While I think all of this has been good, I’ve really been hitting portraits and figure drawing a lot these past few months. It’s been good, but  truthfully it's starting to feel like work. Since I started a new job 4 weeks ago, I don't need more things which feel like work, since I am still in that stage where I am just plain tired a lot of the time, from getting up to speed on things. 

That means I need something that feels more like rainbows, unicorns, and cotton candy, so I’m diverting to something fun and not intense for now. I am trying a new medium for me, gouache.  I saw that Shari Blaukopf had an online class on painting scenes with skies in gouache and it seemed like a good way to learn about this medium. I signed up and bought supplies. 

Here’s the first attempt. I think my clouds and the hills in the background look a little flat, but this is a first attempt. 

I will get back to having more focus with defined projects at some point, but for now I just need some fun. Plus, I have some wonderful sunset pictures from my friend’s cabin and some other good sky pictures that I can explore after I’m done with this class.