What do you do in a Blizzard?

"American Robin (male) - Portrait"

color pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison

What do you do in a blizzard?  Well, plow the acreage, shovel the walks and access to the feeders, have a nice bowl of Pazole (hope I spelled that right?) and then take a nap!  Then realize you haven't posted your latest drawings on your blog!

"American Robin (female) - Portrait"

color pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison

 I had been working on these small life-size color pencil portraits for some time - trying to get them done before the first robins showed for the year...but they beat me to it last week; oh well.  Never-the-less they were fun working on...I especially got a kick out of doing the scruffy immature bird!

"American Robin (immature) - Portrait"

color pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison

These are birds that just about everyone can identify with; probably our most familiar bird of the yard and lawns.  Most people probably don't wonder what kind of habitat this bird favored before we messed up the landscape and introduced lawns.

I have an audio recording I did many years ago of an American Robin in the north woods of Ontario, Canada, along a wilderness river. The familiar song of an American Robin takes on a whole new meaning reverberating down the pine and spruce corridors of the Canadian Shield!  Talk about "Wild"!  It was ghostly and beautiful; its a good bet our tame(ish) lawn birds were not so social before we came along...did we make couch potatoes out of our birds?  OK, that's taking it a bit far but we certainly did have an influence on the natural balance of things.  

Thinking about spring and these so familiar birds, as well as the wildness that still exists in them and their brethren - I guess that's what I do in a blizzard (after all the work is done anyway!).