Flying in a bit late for Draw-a-Bird-Day, this immature or female Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) was eating tiny crabapples in Mill Creek Ravine Park, in late November 2017. Pine Grosbeaks bite through the skin of crabapples, eat the seeds and discard the pulp. They do the same with mountain ash berries. Realistically, the feathers of immature and female birds are grey and orange, but I … Continue reading Winter bird
Today was my final exam for principles of ecology. The snowshoe hare came up in a few of the exam questions, so I thought this would be a good day to publish a post I started earlier this year and finished a few weeks ago. A little after sunset, on December 9th 2017, the white rabbit appeared, well a hare actually, or more precisely a … Continue reading Last December…
Happy Draw-A-Bird-Day! I didn’t plan on spending 12 hours with this raven but I did. I mostly used a mechanical pencil with a fat HB lead. The fat lead can be sharpened with the little steel head of the pencil but I found it easier to use my 3-sided pencil sharpener on the side with the half-length blade. Even right after sharpening, the tip of … Continue reading The raven
It’s a headless, neckless, one-legged and one-armed Glossy Ibis skeleton! I partially and approximately re-drew it from Katrina van Grouw’s beautiful Glossy Ibis skeleton in her book The Unfeathered Bird. If you find bird skeletons intriguing, this book is must-see eye candy and wonderfully informative too. A while back, I posted a drawing of a feathered bird wing. While doing research for that post, I … Continue reading Bird bones
On July 15th, 2017, around 3 PM, I walked along the trail leading to the Cooper’s Hawk nest. The first fledgling I saw was the youngest looking. Another fledgling, of seemingly intermediate maturity (less remaining white down than one sibling but more than the other), was calling its parents repeatedly, because it was hungry, or because it was not comfortable with my presence. It called … Continue reading The Coopers: Part 3
A couple of days ago, I saw a photo of a New Zealand Fantail on eBird and I couldn’t resist drawing the little bird. The photo was taken by Steve Kelling at Okia Reserve, New Zealand (near Dunedin). Steve works at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and has seen 2671 bird species. Très cool! I drew the wee bird in my wee 4 by 6 … Continue reading New Zealand Fantail
According to eBird data, Common Redpolls are not seen in the Edmonton area between June and September, except for the sighting of a single bird on July 5th, 2014. Their breeding grounds are north of Alberta, in Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The Atlas of Breeding Birds of Alberta (Semenchuk 1992) does mention occasional nesting in Edmonton. This species also breeds in … Continue reading They’re back!
