Rio Brazos Audubon Society: November Challenge

The simple act of seeing and recognizing a bird in your backyard carries with it a long- and somewhat unappreciated- history of natural observation. What do you notice when you see a Northern Cardinal? How do you recognize it? Is it the ornamental red of the males? Or the claxon orange beak contrasted against the soft brown of the females? Maybe it’s not with your eyes but your ears… the dawn song of these ubiquitous backyard companions is comfortingly familiar to backyards across the eastern US.

How ever we observe our surroundings, the detail we see and hear will depend on the energy (time!) we invest, and on the knowledge we have to draw from. Shorebirds on a distant levy often does not inspire confidence… or enthusiasm! But with observation and knowledge, identity becomes second nature. Look! One is bobbing it’s tail and has a strongly spotted breast. Another with a longish bill and yellowish legs has flown and is calling “tu tu tu”, “tu tu tu”. And a third has a very fine bill and is spinning around in shallow water! These are three distinct shorebirds that may appear similar at first glance, but are clearly different in their features, colorings, calls, and behaviors.

Scientia potential est

Knowledge is power. This is of course not a new idea. Versions of the phrase are known from Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes in the late 1500s and 1600s. In addition to being a well known idea, it also strikes me as self-evident. Surely we all remember the times when we would go out to look for birds, and not even know what to look for! Or where to look!

Look at that little brown job! Ug. Sparrows. It’s brown.

Look at that little bird flitting through the bushes… it’s yellow and… gone.

But with a little practice and some knowledge, we can start adding detail to our observations.

Look at that sparrow! With that stripy chest and yellow spot above it’s beak! Sitting on the fence wire!

Look in the that yaupon… there’s a little bird- yellow underneath- with a black cap! Eating insects!

The question that persists is how do we build our knowledge base? It’s really just a bunch of trivia, right? Well, we could memorize and memorize and memorize…

Male Northern Shovelers have a large black, shovel-like bill, green head, white chest, and rufus belly. Females are medium brown with a mottled pattern. Both sexes have light blue coverts and green secondaries. They have a winter range in across the southern US, and a breeding range from the Midwest US to Alaska.

There. We just described a Northern Shoveler. Do you feel like you have any better idea of what it looks like? Me neither.

Pouring through the guide books is the usual strategy… and it’s a good one. Seeing these birds represented in pictures and idealized sketches is probably the best way to practice seeing the birds. But that can be time consuming, and frankly a little dry at times.

We need another way to learn these birds.

But what else can we do to become familiar with their shapes? Get a feeling for the long tail of a Cooper’s Hawk? Or the stockiness of a Red-tailed Hawk’s wings? Are there really differences in these sparrows or are they just a conspiracy to keep phylogeneticists and morphologists employed?

Wait... you're telling me these birds are different!?!?

What if we were to sketch them?

Draw them. Make the bird with your own hands! You’ll never get a better feel for the bulkiness of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s beak, or the tapered wing of an American Kestrel than you will by trying to recreate the shapes you see in the field on paper.

Why let David Sibley have all of the fun?

The Challenge!

For this challenge, we’re going break out the sketch pads and smocks! Art class is in session! In the great tradition of John James Audubon, Roger Tory Peterson, and even Charley Harper, we're going get outside our comfort zone to record what we've seen by hand!

We’ll actually have two different challenges:

1) Make a happy little bird in the corner here (aka Draw me like one of your French birds)

The challenge: make one sketch of a bird of your choosing taken from either your own photos or source that allows recreations (like Wikimedia Commons). It can be just a pencil sketch, a colorized sketch, computer sketch, etc.

If you don't feel up to drawing birds, how about a nice native plant? Like a Yaupon Holly or American Beautyberry? Make it something native and something the birds like!

***We’ll have to have entries from 5 different people for this contest to be considered a contest!***

The prize: A bird feeder from Pennington Wild Birds! And a Sibley's Guidebook!

Please encourage kids and/or grandkids to enter this too- let them teach you the shapes and colors that they see! We'll have some more kids-oriented stuff for them for entering.

2) Momma don’t take my Kodachrome away!

To pair with our field trip to the Baggett Country Photo Ranch in Coryell County, we’ll be running a little competition for those that are more photographically inclined. Break out your favorite photo from your portfolio and send it in! This can be a photo taken recently, or from a while ago. We will ask that the photo have been taken in Texas. Since I anticipate having more entries here, please limit your submission to two photos.

***We’ll have to have entries from 5 different people for this contest to be considered a contest!***

The prize: one of our guidebooks (Kauffman, Sibley’s, or Crossley)!

DEADLINE

Please have your sketches or photo submitted to riobrazosaudubon@gmail.com by 03DECEMBER2014. I’ll send out an email with a link to the albums and a link to a secret ballot. We’ll have a week of voting and then announce the winners at the CBC Organizing Meeting on 10DECEMBER2014.

These two contests are open to anyone on the RBAS Google Group, TMN-BV Google Group, friends, and family.

Files:

For both Challenges, please send a low resolution file (72dpi in .jpg, .tif, or other standard image format) to riobrazosaudubon@gmail.com. I’ll post it to a private Picasa page and send the link out to only our group and other participants when the voting begins at the beginning of December.

Tips and such:

I’ll address the sentiment that I initially had when coming up with this contest: “Do you really expect us to draw?!?! That’s crazy! I haven’t drawn anything since... well... a long tim ago!!”

I know I know. But you know what? I haven’t drawn anything in a while either, and these were my first efforts:

My effort of a variety of subjects

I even made Sarah do one too! I think her's is better...

Sarah's Rufous Hummingbird

Mine were done one evening on the blank side of index cards. Sarah's was on a folded piece of printer paper. Nothing fancy, but enough to make us think about what these birds looked like.

Now did I just come up with these out of the blue? No. I read a little! And practiced making circles for about an hour or two.