Welcome Warblers - 2014

Black-throated Green Warbler at Carpenters Woods. Photo by Ken Januski.

I almost feel like I'm on the boardwalk at Magee Marsh in Ohio in May. So many warblers all over the place that only an iron will can get me to sketch birds and not try to photograph them. The birds were not nearly that numerous nor that close today but they were low and many of them were new.

My iron will went out the window and I ended up taking photos rather than sketching. I need to get back into practice with sketching them. The photo above seemed an appropriate one for anybody who's been waiting to see warblers. The pose has a sense of exuberance similar I think to that of birders when they first see warblers in spring.

All but the final Pine Warbler were birds I saw today. After a day and night of rain warmer temperatures moved in and seemed to bring these warblers, along with thrushes and other migrants. The rain kept the insects low I think and that kept the birds low Most were at eye level.

American Redstart at Kitchens Lane Bridge. Photo by Ken Jauski.

 

For all the American Redstarts I've seen over the years I rarely get a decent photo. This is one of the better ones.

Black and White Warbler along Wissahickon. Photo by Ken Januski.

Outside of Yellow-rumps by far the most common bird today was the Black and White Warbler. I'm sure I saw at least 20. This is one in a somewhat unusual pose.

Black-throated Blue Warbler at Carpenters Woods. Photo by Ken Januski.

We see the Black-throated Blue far more often in fall than spring here so it was nice to get such a good look at two beautiful males today, singing as well, just like the Black-throated Green.

Northern Parula at Carpenters Woods. Photos by Ken Januski.

One of the most beautiful warblers is the Northern Parula. But it also is a bird I rarely get good photos of. Today two of them cooperated by staying nice and low, rarely above eye level.

Yellow-rumped Warbler at Carpenters Woods. Photo by Ken Januski.

The Yellow-rump of course is the warbler that can't get any respect, only because it is so common. But if you can forget about that it is one of the most beautiful warblers, especially in spring.

Pine Warbler at Wissahickon. Photo by Ken Januski.

The Pine Warbler is another one that I rarely get good photos of. This one is from a week ago. But it is such a striking bird that I decided to include it with all of the beautiful warblers from today.

One other warbler that I saw today and heard at least three times was an Ovenbird. I also saw one the other day. But when I bird I'm not fixated on photography. So by the time I thought about taking a photo of him he had strolled away, as they do. That's okay. Next time I'll focus on what he looks like and get back to sketching these very welcome birds.

Other first of year birds today were Veeries and one Wood Thrush. As always its also great to welcome them back.

Troublemakers

That would be kinglets and warblers, at least when you're trying to do field sketches of them. In my last post I mentioned how happy I was with my last two pastel drawings of the Orchard Orioles and the Black-throated Blue and Tennessee warblers. I still I am and plan to continue in that direction.

But I also want to continue working from life, getting better at drawing birds as I see them, even if it's only for a split second as is often the case with warblers and kinglets.

The drawing at top includes a Golden-crowned Kinglet, followed by a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and then a male Black-throated Blue Warbler. Since I didn't have a scope and the birds only sat still for a split second I looked at the birds, tried to 'burn the image onto my retina' and then look down and start drawing. This seems to be good for getting the general shape of a bird. But unless you're one of those people who can think 6 moves ahead in chess you run into trouble on move number two. Where do the noticeable markings go, for instance the obvious stripes in the head of the Golden-crowned Kinglet and the huge eye in the Ruby-crowned Kinglet? Where exactly are those black and white markings on the black-throated blue?

Well these are problems. In each of the sketches above I used my visual memory of other drawings and photos. As usual my memory was wrong. When I checked later I saw that once again I had both the wing position and the markings wrong on the kinglets. And I once again elongated the head of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I've made this same mistake in 90% of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet field sketches I've made! The Black-throated Blue is a bit better but that's partially because I held off on some markings until I could get home and check a reference.

Why put myself through such torture? If I meet people when I'm out sketching their obvious comment is: why don't you just take photos and use them. It seems hopeless to try to explain the lack of connection that results in working from photos. Not to mention the added excitement of trying to draw what's right in front of you before it moves. That excitement comes out in field sketches I believe. It also teaches you to see.

One of the odd things that does happen in field sketching is that you put down your impression. In the watercolor above, which was based on some photos of a Golden-crowned Kinglet I took the other day, I tried to accentuate what I saw with my naked eye, rather than all that the photo showed me. Inevitably photos show you the edge of each primary, secondary, tertial feather. But you don't see the world this way. What I saw instead was a sleek oval with stripes on the head and a black and white arrow/chevron toward the back.

The arrow/chevron made no sense to me as I saw it? What was it? What part of the feathers created it? But the impression was most definitely there. When I checked the photos I saw it was a combination of a black mark and some edging on the flight feathers coupled with a slightly lighter color in those feathers. Since I had photos to work from I could have delineated each feather. But why? What I saw was the black and white arrow/chevron shape. So that's what I tried to accentuate.

This is the choice each artist must make since the advent of photography. Do you want to be true to photos or true to what you see. They are vastly different.

The last sketches above include a Red-bellied and Downy Woodpecker at a feeder. It also includes more warblers and kinglets, none very successful. These sketches are from a few days ago. The one at top is from today and yesterday. I think that they show I'm slowly improving with this. Hopefully I'll finally get a believable kinglet sketch before they're gone until next year.

By the way if you do want to see some beautiful photos of Golden-crowned Kinglets in tremendous detail you couldn't go wrong with this recent post from Corey at 10000birds. One of them shows the chevron that I mentioned.

Warblers in Walkingsticks

I believe that I've finished the new pastel of the Black-throated Blue and Tennessee warblers in Devil's Walkingstick. In the end I stayed pretty close to one of the compositional sketches I showed a few days ago.

I did make the berries stronger than in the preliminary sketch, both as a design device as well as to accentuate the importance of these berries to birds. You can only say so many things and write so many letters questioning the wisdom of pulling out Devil's Walkingstick. Sometimes a work of art has more effect. That of course wasn't my main purpose in making this drawing. But it is a possible added benefit.

I'm also including the finished version of the Orchard Orioles and nest. It's not terribly different than what I last posted but there are some changes. I also like posting it here because I think these two drawings are fairly successful, at least by my idiosyncratic standards.

As an artist you often do works you're not that fond of that quickly find public appreciation and vice versa, works you like that don't seem popular. But as others have said, the public is fickle. I'm sure some artists are successful by catering to public tastes, and sometimes you have no choice if you want to sell anything. But for me I've always wanted to first meet my own exacting standards. These two works have done that I'm happy to say.

To me at least they portray an accurate view of something seen, they are well designed in composition and color, and they use the medium of pastel to advantage. Not everyone who sees these is going to agree. In fact some may now be on floor slapping their knees in laughter because this seems so wrong. Seriously. But I'm my hardest critic and I'm happy with what I've accomplished here and I wanted to explain why.

Click-Click

It's sometimes hard to convince people how important bird songs and calls are in identifying birds. I remember talking to a co-worker once, who supposedly knew about birds, who remarked that he thought learning calls and songs was for snobs. Real Birders SEE Birds. Well, not exactly.

If you know bird vocalizations you can spend time looking where you hear the unusual bird, and perhaps getting it in view in your binoculars, rather than chasing movement with your eyes only to find that you've just put your binoculars on robin number 42 for the day.

Today I really didn't need to know any vocalizations though. This time a Black-throated Blue warbler landed in front of me, then vocalized a loud 'Click' every time he moved amidst the Devil's Walkingstick. I'd put down my binoculars for my camera and was trying to shoot some photos. So having him constantly giving me vocal clues as to his whereabouts was tremendously helpful. Warblers don't tend to sit still. So you can bet that by the time you've focused your camera, binoculars or scope that they've probably moved.

This constant 'click', also described as 'dik' or 'thik' helped me find him each time he moved. It was also loud. That's one more pleasure of birding: learning the surprising aspects of birds. You wouldn't think such a small bird would be so loud. But it is.

The quick watercolor at top was done in 15-30 minutes, based on a photo I took. Like many of these quick watercolors that are intended mainly as blog illustrations I don't take a lot of care with them. They're really meant to illustrate a story/post. I've been trying to document all the birds that feed on Devil's Walkingstick, a plant that for some perverse reason is classified as an invasive by many. When I got a photo of him with a berry from that plant in his bill I just couldn't resist painting it.

My Favorite Sketchbook Pages

of any artist, myself included, often look like the page above. I realized this as I did these sketches today. They're thumbnail sketches of a Black-throated Blue warbler and a Tennessee warbler, both seen in Devil's Walkingstick, feeding on the berries, this past Sunday. As much as I like seeing a quick field sketch that captures the sense of life in a bird, often at a unique moment, I'm equally taken with planning sketches like these.


They are almost never done from life. Instead they show the artist working out ideas, often using photos, sketches or just memory for the subject. I had no intention of posting about this. But after finishing this page of sketches it hit me how much I like pages like this, for others artist as well as myself.

I think the reason is that you can see an artist thinking out loud, trying out various things. For instance both of these sketches started off horizontal. But as I worked on the lower one I ran out of room to get the Tennessee in and eventually made it into a vertical format.

Who knows if the final drawing will look anything like either of these.

I got the idea to do a more developed pastel after doing the 15-minute watercolor above. At first I thought I'd just do the Black-throated Blue and the Devil's Walkingstick. But then I thought it also might be interesting, and more lifelike, to include the Tennessee as well. One of the showiest of our wood warbler alongside one of the drabbest.

I think one other thing I like about sketches like this is that the artist works in shorthand. The lines are often too light or too dark. The shapes are just indications, not finely tuned. I like that. They show the process of making a drawing or painting. I'm not sure why but I've always loved seeing this.

Speaking of Wood Warblers...

they may all be here tomorrow, at least if you live in the NE United States:Monumental Migration. Along with other migrants of course.

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Well it's noon on the day of the predicted fallout. I spent 3 hours at Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia and found a few birds but not a whole lot more than I would have expected. The best bird was a female Blackburnian 50 feet away and 100 feet up flitting through the leaves. Not much of a view but fortunately it's hard to mistake a Blackburnian. But I almost did. There was another bird in the same area that I and another birder first thought was a Black-throated Green Warbler. About 15 minutes later I sketched the face as I remembered it. The face was bright yellow with dark auriculars.When I got home and checked the field guides though I wondered if it actually could have been the Blackburnian. It also has dark markings around the auriculars. And it was so far away. Finally though I stuck with the Black-throated Green. The color was yellow not yellow-orange and the auricular patch seemed more distinct than in the Blackburnian.

So it was nice to see these but it really wasn't a fallout. Other warblers included another Black-throated Blue feeding on Devil's Walking Stick, a male American Redstart and two Magnolia Warblers, one of them sketched from memory at lower right.. A Eastern Wood Pewee which has been there for weeks if not months was also there and is on top left of sketch. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have also been regular visitors there and one is included on the sketch.

The most surprising bird was a Broad-winged Hawk. I'm sure that's not so unusual this time of year but because of the wooded nature of Carpenter's Woods you don't see that many. Mainly because you're not looking up at the sky.

All in all a beautiful day and a good day  of birding. But for me it wasn't a fallout day.  I hope it was for others.