A Bird in the Hand
Reposted from my October 2023 newsletter, edited for this platform.
You might know that most of this year I have been eluding to an exciting project on the horizon. I've been a little shy sharing the details because, well, it's a big, scary thing in my mind.
Ok, here's the gist. I want to write and illustrate a book about bird migration from an artist's perspective.
There, I said it! Now I have to do it.
I am currently on the road to test out the idea. There is a plethora of logistical things and details to sort out before I can take this project from idea to prototype, too many to list here.
If I'm being honest, it's ultimately to see if I can even do it. The jury is still out on this.
Where did I go in my van to test the idea? I went to Louisianna, to attend the Yellow Rails and Rice Festival!
While there, I also checked out the Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Cameron Prairie NWR, and tried to find Atchafalaya NWR but my gps couldn't get me there.
The pages above represent the final day of working in the field at the event. There are several more pages that were "the first pancakes" in the pan. In other words, the sacrificial pages to sharpen up the hand and eye coordination as well as speed. Like these, below.
If you know the family of rails, you know how elusive they are. They do not like to be seen, and can slip in and around the tall grasses and water of their habitat like an owl in flight. No sound, and nary any disturbance.
Why rice fields? That's where the rails winter, weaving in and out of the plants as inconspicuous as a ghost. You can imagine the joy I felt seeing them up close and in the hand!
The festival has a research component to it.. bird banding. Most of my sketches were done at the bird banding station, getting good looks but still not so easy to draw.
That they were held in the hand of the bander meant not seeing the whole body. Bits and parts was all. I'll take it, though, especially with this group of birds!
The photo to the right is a Sora (Porzana carolina), a member of the rail family.
Above, from the left, the first two photos are Yellow Rails (Coturnicops noveboracensis), the smallest species in the family. Note the white secondaries of flight feathers. The next photo s a Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola), and then the largest rail species, a King Rail (Rallus elegans) on the right.
One of the coolest things about being in Louisianna this time of year is seeing familiar species on their wintering grounds, something I haven't experienced yet.
Knowing a bit about the significant and weighty challenges a bird faces during migration, it sure was a comfort to see so many of them had made it.
My interest in birds is not just to check each species off on a list. I want to know where they came from and where they're going.
I want to know what path they took, when one species or another might arrive in my region, or might stop by as they head to the far north. Don't you want to know these things?
Thus, the idea for a book that follows the migratory pathways.
I'm not an ornithologist. Just someone with a deep curiosity about birds, with a pencil and a paintbrush, and an idea that needs to take flight. Why not me?
Like the birds, I am on the move again, but I'm heading north now, hopping from one national wildlife refuge to another, to observe and sketch birds, and whatever else I might find interest in.
There is so much more to share with you about this trip, so much more about this project that I want to tell you about, but it will have to wait.
Because, like the birds on migration, I have to fly.