Common Ground Dove Watercolor and Ink Step-by-Step

The Common Ground Dove isn’t a bird that I’ve been around my whole life. I’ve only encountered them while on trips to Florida. I really enjoy these beautiful little birds. This particular one was sitting on the dikes between flooded areas at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.

“Ding” is a great place to observe and photograph birds. I first went there in the 1990 when I was a Teaching Assistant for a college course in the Ecology of the Everglades. What a fun trip. The drive down from New York was less than perfect since I was getting over a particularly explosive case of the flu, but considering everything, the drive went pretty quickly. Lots of entertaining stories were told, and some may even have been true. Once guy on the trip was entertaining us with his singing… he could belt out the lyrics to any song on the classic rock stations. This guy had better pitch than most of the original artists and an encyclopedic knowledge of lyrics. We enjoyed “over the top” versions of dozens of songs by the likes of Led Zepplin, Rush, Van Halen and The James Gang. He was also happy to improvise new, highly politically incorrect, but hilarious lyrics to the songs. My favorite lyrical switch that I can repeat was “I don’t want to live without you, Dinty Moore…” My kids still hear me sing that on occasion. Eating food out of cans while camping in the swamps for weeks made that seem funnier every day.

Once we got to Florida, we had a great class and saw an abundance of incredible wildlife. The Everglades is still one of my favorite birding locations. Seeing every heron and egret imaginable plus Wood Storks, Snail Kite, Short-tailed Hawks, Limpkin, Manatee, Bobcat, Cottonmouths, Indigo Snake, Eastern Diamondback and Pygmy Rattlesnakes doesn’t get old too quickly. I’ve made a few more trips down to the Everglades and Southern Florida over the years, and it never disappoints.