Fox Sparrows are beautiful and entertaining birds. I tend to see them only in the spring and fall, but when I do get a peek at them, I always get excited. They are chunky birds with beautiful color and a fun habit of kicking up leaf litter in search of food.
The other star of the show in this painting is an example of Frost’s Bolete. It is a striking mushroom that fruits in the late summer to early autumn. I came across a load of these while mountain biking at a local park. I went back with a bunch of camera gear and my son Timmy, who shares my passion for mushrooms. Combining photos of the Fox Sparrow with the Bolete seemed natural.
While in grad school at St. Bonaventure University, I took mycology during the summer. It was the driest summer I could remember in southwestern New York. Field trips looking for fungus specimens were pretty sparse because things were so arid. Eventually we had a week of torrential downpours, restoring the water table and bringing the mushrooms bursting to life.
When my wife and I were first dating, many of our outings were hikes at the Chagrin Nature Preserves outside of Cleveland. We were always in search of birds but often ended up captivated by mushrooms we’d find along the way. These days Timmy is better at field identification than I am. He has a large collection of photos from our field trips and has even done spore prints to identify tricky specimens.
I’m definitely a bit bird-centric when I pick locations for outings, but often it is the plants, mushrooms, insects, spiders, amphibians and reptiles that steal the show. It helps to learn as much as possible about all those other things. That way, even if the birds are slow, there is almost always something fascinating nearby worth investigating!
Years ago I did a series of frog and salamander paintings that also feature mushrooms. Not surprisingly, fungus is under-represented in the art world. It’s great to show people something they either haven’t seen before or have totally overlooked.
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