Another baby bird. I like the fuzziness of the head, but I think the eyes aren’t great. They look a bit glazed and lifeless.
Herring Gull Chick
illustration
Flamingo
I hate this bird. This may officially be the ugliest, most rushed bird I drew the whole year.
We had gone out for dinner and a concert with friends, and we got home at 2am. I was hot, sweaty, and tired from dancing like a maniac. (Side note: one of the nice things about getting older is that I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore about what I look like on the dance floor. I’m not trying to impress anyone and I’ll likely never see most of these other people again, so I don’t care. I have been told that this inhibition makes me a better dancer than I have ever been. Oh, how I wish I could have learned this lesson sooner and enjoyed larger chunks of my youth.) But I wasn’t going to miss another day of my drawing project, dammit! So I drew this hurried atrocity before crawling under the covers. Ugh. He is horrible. I am sorry, little flamingo. You cannot compare to your brothers, not even the other rushed flamingo I drew in January.
White Fronted Bee Eater
Pretty jewel-colored little bird.
When trying to correct the scanner color input, I may have over-darkened it. The background should be white, not grey. But the scanner was fighting me on every effort. It kept stalling and crashing, and telling me that it was already working on something else when I wasn’t touching it… I swear, do scanners get PMS? Or maybe it’s haunted? Do scanners get haunted? Either way, I gave up.
Green Heron
His whole head looks like a brilliantly painted sword, jabbing out into the space of the page. And he looks pissed, to boot.
Sword-billed Hummingbird
Now that is quite a bill! This is the only bird whose bill is longer than the rest of his body. Pinocchio’s got nothin’ on this fella.
Golden Eagle
I had fun doing the feathers around the eye area.
Black Heron
This bird is a clever bastard. He is standing in water, making a perfect circle with his wings over the water. If he stands absolutely still, a dumb fish will come right under his beak looking for shelter. This poor fish will think he has found the shade from a nice tree or bush growing out of the water – and not a clever hungry bird looking for dinner.
It’s both a beautiful sight, and a brilliant hunting strategy.
Great Frigate
If you love odd looking birds, then the great frigate is your man. The male frigate has a giant red puffy sack on his throat, which he inflates during mating season like a balloon. Actually, a male will inflate the “gular sac” and shake his head vigorously from side to side, attracting the attention of lady birds flying by. Which, in bird speak, is almost the equivalent of a floppy air-man used at car dealerships – doing a crazy air-fueled dance to stop traffic – only to sell himself as a mate and not to sell used cars.
In any case, a truly weirdly wonderful bird.
Ocellated Antbird
Fun shiny-headed bird. Eats army ants, which is pretty brave if you ask me,
claire meyler 