Wood Ducks were fun to see, but they can be a real challenge to draw. This pair had only landed for several minutes before flying off again, giving me time to draw their outlines and nothing else. I had to improvise with a field guide for the patterns and colors to get them just right. I sometimes combined four different colored pencils to get one color on the male wood duck.
This pair of wood ducks took me by surprise when I looked out the window and saw the female perched on top of the corn feeder. It took me a while to find the male perched on a distant cinder block, and once I did I couldn't resist drawing this funny pair. Because of the detail I put into the sketch with just my pencil I decided it would look better without any color. Unlike the previous pair who left after a few minutes, these two stayed around long enough for me to get a lot more detail in before they left for the water.
An uncommon bird that I saw a lot of this summer was the Great Crested Flycatcher, a beautiful bird that stands out from the other indistinguishable flycatchers (seriously, almost all the flycatchers species around Michigan look the same). With the beautiful yellow and orange color this bird was just begging to be drawn. When I had my camera later this year I was able to take a picture of this bird as it watched me from an electrical wire. I've posted this picture as well to show that I haven't exaggerated the bright colors in my sketch.
The resident birds of the WRA were great models for my sketches. The two Barred Owls, "Wilma" and our little orphan "Willy" have been mentioned in the "wild to wild" blog. When I saw Wilma fluffed up trying to scare me away while Willy watched from a corner of his little window I knew I had to sketch this moment. With all the detail in pencil this was destined to become another grayscale sketch, but it was a great opportunity to draw the behavior of certain birds. Willy is now a healthy fledgling and is exercising his wings in the flight hall getting ready for his release back into the wild.
This sketch is of our tiniest rehab patient we had this summer. A woman brought this little hummingbird in to us with the fear that it had broken its wing. She was a little bedraggled thing with drops of hummingbird food stuck to her feathers. We only had her with us for a short time, but she was an interesting little bird and a very willing sketch model.
I hope that everyone has enjoyed my sketches. I plan to post more frequently in the future so stay tuned for more. I guarantee that you won't have to wait long.
