A Weekend Without Warblers

Nashville Warbler Sketch by Ken Januski

Prairie Warblers Sketch by Ken Januski

Prothonotary Warblers Sketch by Ken Januski

A weekend without warblers would indeed be a disappointment if it were April or May, especially if I'd been out birding and wasn't limited to my yard. Warblers are quite rare in the backyard, visiting briefly once or twice a year at most. Most of those are Common Yellowthroats. But who can complain about a weekend in March without warblers in the backyard?

Well I and Jerene can but I'm sure we won't get much sympathy.We were lucky enough to have a Nashville Warbler in the backyard for the two weekends before the last one. But we last saw him on March 6. Since he'd previously eluded us for a full week it seemed possible he might still be around but I'm pretty confident now that he's gone for good.

I did try briefly on the day of his last visit to do a field sketch, something I also tried on the day of his first visit. But he left almost instantly and we haven't seen him yet. Was he really that shy? I'm sure that wasn't the cause of his departure! But it did remind me of how difficult it is to draw warblers, even if they manage the unheard of behavior of sitting still, without the aid of magnification.

The details, such as the size and shape of bill, just can't be seen with the naked eye. I took a lot of photos of this bird, more for documentation purposes than anything else. But now that I have them I see how much I missed when just looking with my naked eye.

One of the first impressions Jerene and I had of the Nashville, before we'd identified it  and I think  even before we'd gotten out our binoculars was how long his bill was. And yet when we read about him later I recall that the guides said he had a short bill. Why the difference? This is something that I think comes out in photos or with optics, the true cause of an overall visual impression. The Nashville has a particularly pointed bill. That I think is was made it seem so long when we first saw it.

That in turn got me thinking about other warblers and their bills. The Prothonotary always strikes me as  having a long bill, though nothing like that of the Yellow-throated Warbler. The Black-throated Blue on the other hand seems to have a bit of a stubby bill. These are my impressions and recollections anyway. I'm sure many birders don't notice bills. They're too busy checking all of the more obvious diagnostic marks used for an ID. More experienced birders of course probably are well aware of these details.

In any case the differences in bill shapes of warblers convinced me that I should go through my photos of warblers and do some sketches, trying to capture both the general shape of them, but also their specifics, like bill shape. That is what I've done above with the Nashville from the backyard, some Prairies from near Belleplaine State Forest in New Jersey and some Prothonotaries from Magee Marsh in Ohio. Often the photos still weren't good enough to see all I needed to see. At other times my skills weren't high enough. But it's been a useful exercise and one I hope to continue with other warblers.

The first normal migrants will soon be here. I'd like to be ready for them. Into the breach one more with field sketches of wood warblers!

Palm Warblers and Unabandoned Paintings

It's been almost two months since my last post. During that time spring migration has largely come and gone. We witnessed it in three states: Illinois, Virginia and here at home in Pennsylvania. But during that great time of the year it always seems far more important to be out as spring and bird migration occur, in the midst of it all, rather than typing away at a computer screen. And of course that's the great irony of nature-related blogs: they may often be used in praise of nature but all the while that they're being created and read is time away from nature. A beautiful photo of a Blackburnian Warbler or piled up clouds on the Blue Ridges of Virginia will never begin to equal actually being out and seeing both the warbler and the clouds.

That said much of that time I use to take photos or make sketches that will later be used for artwork. Over time some of that will appear here and at my primary web site

My last post included a sketch of a Palm Warbler seen while walking along the Wissahickon and trying to figure out what to do for my next painting. Palms are always some of the very earliest warblers of spring migration in the eastern U.S. They're rich golden yellow wash is always a pleasant change from the grays of winter. I wasn't surprised to see them in Philadelphia in early April but I didn't expect to find them in Illinois in early May. I envisioned some of the later warblers that would normally be seen in Philadelphia in early May, not to mention other neo-Tropical migrants like Baltimore Orioles. However my first day birding in Illinois, at the Oakdale Nature Preserve in Freeport, Illinois was a drizzly day in the 40s. In that weather Palm Warblers seemed right. I was just hoping for 70s and Black-Throated Greens!

I took many photos of cooperative Palm Warblers while in Illinois. On one day I wanted to surprise my wife, who was busy with family matters, with a watercolor based on the birds seen that day. So about 4:30 p.m. I went to a photo-processing kiosk at a local drug store and made my first attempt at editing/ordering photos straight off a memory card. Usually I do this at home with my own photo-editing software. The process was a bit clunky but nonetheless I walked out of the store 30 minutes later with a number of photos. They in turn became the source of the small watercolor at top of this post. I finished it before 7 p.m. I imagine there are no awards for speed painting and I wouldn't be interested if there were. Good art is rarely done speedily. But I did have to marvel at the speed of the entire process!

I now have three or four very quick watercolors of Palm Warblers. Soon I'll take a little more time to do a more developed one

Red-headed Woodpecker, Yellow-throated Vireo, White Pelicans and Sandhill Cranes

Other high birding points of the Illinois trip included a very cooperative Red-headed Woodpecker and a Yellow-throated Vireo that stayed about 6 feet off the ground on bare branches rather than 30 feet off the ground buried in vegetation. I saw both of these at Lake Le-Aqua-Na State Park. We don't often see either of these birds so it was great to see both within 25 feet of one another.

One other interesting birding sight: a flock of White Pelicans flying down the Rock River near Castle Rock State Park. Some birds, for example Sandhill Cranes, Great Blue Herons, and White Pelicans, always stop me in my tracks when I see them in flight. There is always something both primordial and magisterial in the image they present.

Speaking of interesting birding sights I also can't forget the 8-10 Sandhill Cranes seen at Chain O' Lakes State Park or the four that landed in front of us as we approached Monroe, Wisconsin. I'd forgotten that we'd seen any notable birds in our brief time in Wisconsin, but the sight of them appearing out of the sky in front of us and landing in the mud of a local farm was enough to make me slam on the brakes and pull off to the side of the road to take a look. I don't think we've ever gotten such a close look at them.

The Unabandoned Painting

The last post included a pen and ink drawing that was to be the basis of the "abandoned painting," the one I couldn't decide what to do with. In mid-April I finished it. The image above is a small version of it. A larger image is at my main web site. I'm happy with it.

I wasn't really sure what to do with this painting. There was a temptation to do a flattened painting where one or more Canada Warblers would be pinned to the flat space of a painting by the various verticals of the stems of the shrubs in which they sat. That would have worked but that type of painting can give precedence to design over subject matter. I've done plenty of that but I didn't want to to it here. I also didn't want to do a vignette, so common in bird paintings. The end result is this multiple vignette. I'm not sure why I chose this but it was an interesting experiment.

That catches me up somewhat on older birding and art activities. I hope the next post will include some new art.

Lone Palm Warbler

I spent three hours walking along the Wissahickon on Thursday. I had no intention of doing this. I was supposed to be inside working on a new painting. But sometimes it seems as if I'm forcing a new painting when I'm really not sure what I want to do. In that case it's often better to just drop it and go for a walk. Given that spring migrants are starting to arrive it wasn't hard to convince myself to do so.

It started off sunny but became overcast almost instantly and stayed that way. Unlike a week ago, where the woods was filled with the sounds and sights of birds, it couldn't have been quieter. When I finally got down to the water I found some small birds high in the hemlocks and sycamores. Unfortunately they had all their color washed out by the overcast sky. Among the birds I did find were: one Brown Creeper, one Golden-Crowned Kinglet, one American Goldfinch and some unidentified warblers. The gray sky, and lack of calls, left me no choice but to leave them unidentified.

From there I walked about a mile along the Wissahickon before doubling back on the other side of the water. Typical birds like Cardinals, Downy Woodpeckers, White-Breasted Nuthatches, et al., eventually totaled another 10 species.

When I got back to where I'd first seen the unidentified warblers one lone Palm Warbler, my first for 2008, made an appearance. He was still high in the sycamores and hemlocks, but his rich burnt siena color shone through the gray, and his constantly twitching tale, confirmed his identity. While moving closer to get a better view of him I flushed a Hermit Thrush out of some rhododendrons for the second time in the past couple of weeks. I've noticed that the Hermit Thrush doesn't have a twitching tail so much as one that seems to be operated like a hydraulic lift. It seems to land, slowly raise its tail up horizontally and then slowly lower it back down, as though it's being controlled hydraulically. One of the reasons that birding remains so rewarding is that there's always something new like this to notice.

The drawing at top is a small pen and watercolor sketch of a palm warbler based on a photo I took about this time two years ago at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge. The one big difference is that bright sunshine accentuated the rich golden and burnt siena colors of the Palm Warbler. Though they're not all that uncommon they remain one of my favorite warblers, I think because of both their early appearance and their striking colors.

The Abandoned Painting

Though it was nice to be out I still had an abandoned painting to deal with when I got back home. Finally I decided to try some pen and ink sketches from some photos of a very cooperative Blackburnian Warbler that landed a few feet in front of my wife and myself last May. Working in pen and ink is a bit unforgiving. Unlike pencil or charcoal you can't erase your mistakes. This either gives an unbearably stiff quality to them, primarily from people who know all too well that you can't erase any marks that you put down, or alternatively can give them both greater sureness of touch and greater vitality. For some reason that seemed the best way to work my way towards a new painting. I guess it's sort of like thinking out loud, though in this case it's drawing out loud.

In doing 'bird' or 'wildlife' art my intent is both to be true to the subject matter and to make a work of art. As many people will tell you once you start talking about making 'art' you've made the task more complicated, not necessarily better just more complicated. I'm not going to go into great depth about this except to say that it can give some self-consciousness to the process that can be stifling. In my case for just this one new painting that included questions like: if I do a watercolor based on one the my recent photos of birds will they be too subject to the cropping/framing that often takes place in photos; do I really want to flatten out the space the way that some framing can do; do my photos have enough detail that I can adequately represent all parts of the bird; if some parts are in shadow do I know enough about the structure of birds to construct it from my imagination; am I making the painting too limited by sticking to what is in the photo; can I improvise elements that aren't in the photo; do i just want to do a vignette of a bird where it floats in empty space.

Well obviously this is enough to put anyone to sleep, including the artist! For whatever reason I finally decided to start a new large watercolor based on photos of the same Canada Warbler in more or less the same position taken over a 1-2 minute period. This is something of a multi-vignette and I have no idea how I'll tie all the separate subjects together. I've never tried anything like this before.

This is the initial pen and ink sketch. Tomorrow I start adding watercolor.