June Approaches...Keep savoring Spring!

Eastern Bluebird

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

May seems a bit messed up to me with Memorial Day weekend coming so early; and yes, its been a dry - then soaking month as well.  But we are fortunate here...we didn't need a lot...got more than we wanted...yet no serious flooding here.  Oh there's some of the typical streams out of their banks but no more so or damaging than usual.  But we're lucky - other parts of the state are having real flooding issues.

Cape May Warbler

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

One thing May has brought is cool weather and some real interesting fallout of migrating birds.  Always up for cool birds!   One of the best migrants that stopped for about 3 days during the constant rain was a Cape May Warbler.  Now we've seen Cape Mays before...up in Canada, but never passing through on migration.  It was a real treat!  Liked grape jelly - had to fight for it with all the Orioles but held it's own despite only being a third of the size!

 Summer Tanager (first year male)

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

We also were lucky to get a Summer Tanager (first year male) to visit the feeders for a day.  We've been seeing a "Lot" of reports for both Summer and Scarlet Tanagers this spring and actually "did" get a Scarlet Tanager for "a few seconds" across the driveway in the Dandelions with the Goldfinches, but it never showed again...a shame - I'd really have liked to have gotten a photograph!!!

Baltimore Oriole

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

Brown Thrasher

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

Of course there were many of the old familiar friends that returned, like the Baltimore Orioles and Brown Thrashers...but we also got our Hose Wrens, Catbirds, Orchard Orioles, Red-headed Woodpeckers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and many others back for the season...they so brighten up our days!

Bobolink

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

Our pasture's birds also returned; just yesterday afternoon our Dickcissels arrived!  They're usually the last grassland bird here.  Luckily our Bobolinks have also come back and have been flying from pasture to pasture doing their flight "thing"...like they're staking out their territory...or trying to attract a lady.  I worry about the Bobolinks on the south pasture, as it was slightly decreased in size by maybe 3/4 of an acre...the neighbor who owns the 4 acres south of our one acre, wanted to take his fence line out and make things more expedient for his equipment.  Every sliver of grassland gone can make a difference...I don't know if that will deter another nesting on this small bit of ground.  Who knows how much it takes to convince one Bobolink that there's enough space or forage to raise a family?  I'm crossing my fingers.

 "The Hurt-Adkins Mill"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

Finished a commission for someone out of state.  Was a bit challenging as it was an actual location (in Kentucky) and historic grist mill, that fell down about 30 years ago. Very little to work with...spent a lot of time going through historic records to get it as accurate as possible...worked through the late winter months on this landscape/location, am very happy with how it finished out! "The Hurt-Adkins Mill" - oil painting.

 "In the Wild Plum - Nashville Warbler"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

I talked about this painting a couple years back...was working on it the summer my father passed away.  I felt pretty good about this painting and wanted it considered for an international exhibit but held off until this Spring, as I wanted it to be included in my solo exhibit at the Pearson Lakes Art Center last fall.  

The exhibit I wanted it considered for is "Birds in Art".  I've been accepted into this prestigious exhibition 5 times since 1983...that's only 5 times in 37 years!  Its a real difficult exhibit to be juried into...but most years I keep at it.  Then a couple weeks ago I was notified that this painting "In the Wild Plum - Nashville Warbler" has been selected by 3 independent jurors across the country to be included in the international "Birds in Art" exhibition for 2020 this fall. 

I still find it overwhelming to be selected to exhibit with 90 other artists from all over the world. Because of the pandemic there will be no traditional weekend gathering of artists, so we will not get to meet new faces or talk with many we've met over the years. This is the coveted holy grail exhibit for bird artists - hosting work from across the US, Canada, South America, Africa, Europe, the British Isles, Asia and Australia. 

The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI will exhibit Birds in Art from September 18 through November 29th - after which the exhibition will go on national tour. Years back one of my serigraphs was selected for an international tour traveling through the US to Bejing, China. 

I guess all those distractions from the birds I so love paid off once more...I feel very blessed. 

Its been a busy late winter/spring here but now its back to reality...stay safe out there and treat each other with caring and respect. Have a Good Summer!

Rekindled...

"In the Wild Plum - Nashville Warbler"

oil painting on canvas - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

I was having one of those days last spring where I was in a funk of some sort, and Georgie came into the studio and said the plums were full of warblers and "Why didn't I get outside and take some warbler pictures!"

To make a long story short I gabbed a chair and sat under the plum across from the studio deck and photographed these little, almost hyper warblers catching tiny insects pollinating the profusion of blooms...come to think of it, I may have even blogged about it.

I had been working on other things at the time but while going through the files of warbler shots one caught my eye - a male Nashville Warbler "on the hunt"...the camera caught the small fly and the warbler's posture about to spring and catch it's prey...the photograph was "OK" but it needed something - I knew it needed painting.

Finally, in mid June I got around to stating the idea of this painting...I began by laying in the entire background of out-of-focus and blowing branches, trying to create some kind of movement of color and shapes.  A couple of days into the piece I felt I did have something I needed to finish.

My Dad had just taken ill and I wanted to make a trip to see him, so I broke loose from the studio and headed to Ft Dodge - it had been raining A LOT and on the way I was detoured twice by water flowing over the county black tops I drove...it delayed me and when I arrived I found my siblings there at Dad's side; he was unconscious and slipping away.  

We spent the day together there in our Father's room, trying to stay calm and together; later that night Dad left us as I was talking to him.

My Father had always supported my work...I keep a note he wrote me a few years ago, here on my studio desk...sometimes it makes me smile, sometimes cry...its signed "your proud Dad".  He liked being a part of my artwork in earlier years, when I was obsessed with drawing, silk screening, photographing and painting birds...even  surprising me by showing up at "Birds in Art" exhibitions I was accepted into, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI.  He always asked what I was up to in later years.

I was hoping to show him my latest painting, it is more reminiscent of those early passions I fed off of...I think he would have liked it.

It wasn't easy picking this back up after Dad's passing...it was weeks before I finally kicked the stool out from under myself and finally got in front of the easel again; but even then my progress has been less than stellar. 

I feel a rekindling of sorts now.  Its hard to explain.  Have I come full circle?  I don't know, but I've got too many things in my head now - I'd better get busy before they disappear! 

 

From the Beginning

I don't know if I've ever gotten into this topic before (?), but it is something I relive occasionally when someone poses a question where I started; where it all began I guess.

First it was just unintentional small steps...parents who didn't protest the little things...frogs, toads and turtles "free ranging" in the basement; science summer school; teaching the neighborhood squirrels to eat out of my hand; wading and fishing in neighborhood streams.

I gained an appreciation for the beauty of this scheme of things. I was fascinated by the light shimmering off the membrane of an amphibian, the colors and design of a turtle's carapace and plastron, the shapes of trees, their leaves, the hillsides along the Des Moines River valley, the rocks and fossils along Lizard Creek, or lying on a pasture hillside staring at the sky...watching clouds and the birds that intersected my field of view.

One day I bought a book, I was eleven or twelve, the book was full of color illustrations by Louis Aggassiz Fuertes. They were awesome, beautiful...the slip cover of this 1917 edition book, for the lack of a better word, transported me. Two of my most favorite birds, a Cooper's and a Red-tailed Hawk, were perched on treetop branches above forested hillsides. The landscape and the birds were mesmerizing for a young impressionable me. I wanted to paint birds.

Birds in the yard would never seem to hold still long enough for me to draw; I got the idea I needed to photograph them, and then I could draw them from their photo; brilliant idea I thought.

I didn't have a camera, but my mother loaned me her old box camera. Ya, the old Ansco Shur-Shot Jr. at the top of this blog, was to be my first camera. I actually took quite a few pictures with this Ansco...all B&W...it was a 120 film camera (2 1/4X2 3/4" or 6X7cm). You can kind of guess how useful it was as a bird camera though - not very.

One incident convinced me to get a "suitable" camera. I was walking the upper banks along Lizard Creek's south branch west of town one summer afternoon. It was a typical hot and humid day and the afternoon wasn't the best condition to find birds. By just dumb luck I came upon a Great Horned Owl sitting in a tree jutting out of the high bank below me. The bird was maybe 3 feet out from the bank on a branch about 8-10 feet above the water flowing beneath it. The bird was awake, looking across the creek into the woodland there. I dropped as fast as I could into the grass above the high bank and crawled very slowly on my stomach to the bank's edge and peered over - it hadn't seen or heard me, the noise of the creek had masked my presence. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure the bird would hear it!

The owl was sitting in deep shade. I pushed the box camera ahead of me and tried peering into the viewfinder without raising my head too much and giving myself away. I was no more than 6-8 feet away from the bird, yet I could not find the owl in my viewfinder, it just was not bright enough. I looked up again and tried to reference where the bird was, then looked back into the viewfinder - still no bird, I looked up again and the owl was no where...it was gone.

Whether the bird spotted or heard me I really don't know, what I do remember is the rush from the experience and the needling anguish of blowing it! That was not going to happen again! I spent the next year saving money from about any odd job I could find, and bought myself an SLR and a 400mm lens. As best I can recollect, this was in 1962.

I became hooked on nature photography that way...birds eventually led to all flora and fauna and to the landscape. Painting nature eventually led the same direction.

I don't know why I didn't become a biologist or botanist? There was always an urge to paint, draw or photograph and that's all I can say.

We all gotta start somewhere!