It’s been a while since I last posted. I guess that’s good and bad. It’s good because that means I’ve been busy with illustration and animation work. It’s bad because I’ve had less time to paint. In addition to work, the warm weather has meant my time is further stretched thin as I’ve been out on the trails with the mountain bike, photographing or doing less exciting things like mowing the lawn. While I have a brief window between projects, I thought I’d get to the backlog of sketches I’ve amassed.
Wilson’s Snipe and American Woodcock are in the sandpiper family. Woodcocks frequent wet woods where they hunt for earthworms and other invertebrates. Wilson’s Snipe, on the other hand, like wet fields. I took photos of this bird at Burke Lake Banding Station last fall. Though they catch Woodcock there occasionally, this was their first Wilson’s Snipe, and it came as a big surprise. The habitat was wrong, but it seems that anything can happen during migration. I try to get there at least once a week with the kids during fall migration. It’s a great way to brush up on confusing fall warblers. Fall birding is awesome. Although some are harder to identify, the volume of birds it so much greater than in the spring, after six months of “natural selection” has thinned out the population.
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