Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Birds



Sunbather
graphite on Stonehenge
copyright Jeanette Jobson


This hasn't been a good bird week on the farm. Four ducks have mysteriously disappeared since Saturday - two today. And there has been no trace. No feathers, no sound, nothing. Three Khaki Campbells which are sweet little soft sounding brown ducks and today a large white Pekin too. A duck skull was found in the woods this evening. While it sounds a little macabre, it was a duck that went missing a year or more ago most likely and the skull is fascinating to draw. I shall see if I can find the jaw bone of it to make the complete skull and perhaps some other bones.

These latest disappearances may be the work of a large hawk or an eagle. Its nesting time for bald eagles here and one did come visiting last year in search of ducks but was unsuccessful luckily. Then again it could be a fox or a coyote, but in broad daylight unlikely. The ducks will stay in for a few days and we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile this sketch of a pigeon settled in on a sandy beach fit my craving for drawing birds today. Its been a very busy week with little time to draw and tonight was a teaching night so that slayed my chances to draw once more. Tomorrow is a late night at work so perhaps at the weekend, I'll finally have time to block out the world and get some graphite on paper.

3 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

Sorry to hear about your birds :( When people first told me that their birds were being killed when I lived Alberta and they thought it might have been an eagle, I didn't think that Eagles got big enough to carry away a large duck. That was until I saw one. Was taking a cab into town and there was a bird on the road and it didn't move until we were very close. This huge Golden Eagle flew right above the windscreen, and than I believed the farmers(the cab driver wasn't going to hit the bird, he was about to move the car out of the way). It was huge, but very neat to see such a bird so close. Wish I had of had a camera :)

Hopefully you don't lose more birds

Jeanette Jobson said...

It seems to be a fact of life on a farm, but still distressing.

YEs eagles are huge, their wing spans can be massive. The little Khaki Campbells aren't large ducks so probably easy prey but the Pekin duck is fairly large. I just hope we find out what's taking them.

Laurel Neustadter said...

Your drawing is beautiful ... the soft and subtle shading is very nice.