Male Yellow Warbler Transparent Watercolor and Ink Step-by-step
I love Yellow Warblers. Few birds are quite as cheery as these little yellow dynamos. We have had the pleasure of having them in our yard in the spring and summer pretty regularly the past few years. We are certain they nested somewhere in the yard, because of the frequent calling, but despite our efforts we never found the nest.
Red-breasted Goose Pencil Sketch p58
This is a sketch of a Red-brested Goose that I saw at the Toledo Zoo. It is a bird I knew nothing about before seeing it in captivity. They are endangered geese from Northern Asia. Its Latin name is Branta ruficollis. Other species with this genus are the Brant, Cackling Goose, Canada Goose and Hawaiian Nene Goose. Ignoring sub-species, there are only six species in the family. All have black feet and other black areas prominent in their color schemes.
Historically this family had more species, including other Hawaiian Geese, some of which were large flightless individuals weighing up to 18 lbs. In an oft-repeated pattern, once humans found the islands, the birds quickly became extinct. Being flightless and tasty probably isn’t a great combination—at least for the birds. No doubt the humans brought along rats and other species that wreaked havoc on their populations.
Sub-fossil evidence of these interesting birds have been found on the islands, sometimes in exotic locations like lava tubes, where liquid lava used to flow underground, but which have emptied out and remained hollow. In these tubes their remains were protected from the elements. One would assume the flightless birds fell down into the tubes and couldn’t get back out. Not a pleasant way to go.
Fossil birds fascinate me. The scale of many of the prehistoric birds is staggering. Today we think of an ostrich as being a large bird. Of course it is big, but some fossil birds put it to shame. A fossil penguin called Palaeeudyptes klekowskii stood approximately six-and-a-half feet tall, weighing an estimated 250 lbs. That sounds like stats for a defensive lineman. A fossil specimen related to our modern Ratites was the South Island Giant Moa (Dinornis robustus). This behemoth measured just shy of twelve feet tall!
Pelagornis sandersi was an albatross-like seabird with a toothed beak and a wingspan of 20-24 feet! Its remains were found while constructing a new airport terminal in Charleston, South Carolina.
Another interesting, ancient group was the Terror Birds, which were carnivorous. Some of these approached 10 feet tall. Living about 15 million years ago, they were fast and agile hunters. One species, Kelenken guillermoi, had the largest head of any known bird, with a 28-inch skull (including its 18-inch beak). Terror Bird sounds like an appropriate name!
Snowy Egret in Flight Transparent Watercolor Step-by-step
This painting has been on my “to do” list for a long time. I got photos of this cooperative bird while on a photo trip to Ft. Myers, Florida with my brother Ted. We hit Little Estero Lagoon a number of times. That is a high yield area for wading birds that are habituated to humans. As the tide recedes it leaves some shallow ponds filled with trapped fish. The egrets, herons and ibis come in to fill their bellies while you fill up your camera’s memory cards with photos. It is a Win/Win situation for everyone except the fish.
The challenge is combing through hundreds of nearly identical shots to find the occasional gem. A photo professor I had years ago once said the thing that makes a good photographer is throwing away a lot of photos. I’ve thought about that over the years and think his statement is true on many levels. First, learning anything worthwhile takes plenty of practice. You make a lot of mistakes in that process and throw away many of the results. Second, as you improve over the years, some of the things you thought were great early on are surpassed by your more practiced efforts, so you throw away some more. Third, with some kinds of shooting, like wildlife photography, success depends on having the basic skills honed and being at the right place at the right time. Excluding equipment, it comes down to having your technique on “autopilot” so you can concentrate on framing and anticipating behaviors. The motor drive is a great thing, but it does make for a lot more shots to pick through.
I’m not the greatest photographer in the world, but I’ve steadily improved over the years. Digital photography has been great for me. It encourages experimentation with immediate feedback so your learning curve is easier. The downside of digital photography is the temptation to “rescue” bad photos in Photoshop. Typically I only use Photoshop to crop images and remove dust from the sensor. For a once-in-a-lifetime shot, I might also adjust the exposure. Otherwise, I try to do my editing in camera rather than in Photoshop.
Common Redpoll Pencil Sketch p57
We’ve had no Common Redpolls yet this winter. I sure miss seeing them. This drawing was done from photos I took of Common Redpolls visiting our thistle feeder two years ago.
Redpolls are fascinating birds. To me they seem kind of exotic because they aren’t super common in mid-Michigan. In the Arctic Circle they are pretty abundant. Cold just doesn’t seem to phase these little dynamos in the least. I’ve read that they have no problem surviving temps below -60 degrees Fahrenheit. I can’t even fathom temps that low. For a tiny bird with almost no mass to metabolically heat itself in a challenging environment like that is incredible. To do so they must consume a tremendous amount of fuel. In fact they will eat almost half their body weight in a day! To help them survive the extreme cold, they have some clever behaviors that are a bit unusual for birds. One technique is tunneling beneath the insulating snow. Their tunnels can be as long as a foot and as deep as 4 inches below the surface of the snow.
I grew up in a small town south of Buffalo, New York. There we were accustomed to some incredibly snowy winters with excruciatingly cold temperatures at times. Living at the bottom of a hill on a narrow dead-end street meant that the snowplow would create mountainous, packed snow piles by our house. My brothers and I would take out my Dad’s Vietnam Era trenching shovel and go about making colossal snow forts connected by extensive networks of “underground” tubes through the snow. We’d have seemingly endless snowball fights there. We usually stopped before someone was permanently scarred or disfigured by an errant head-shot with an “Ice Ball.” To make a weapons-grade snowball, one might occasionally include some pebbles the plow put down for traction. Of course this was strictly against our family’s version of the Geneva Convention, but this was WAR. If you happened to get your “Purple Heart” and had to retreat inside with a hematoma swelling up on your forehead, you were in good shape because there was plenty of snow and ice around to keep the swelling to a minimum.
Aside from being educated about survival of the fittest in our wintery “Lord of the Flies” scenario, I actually did learn some things of scientific value. In the tubes that we’d dig it would always seem much warmer that the outside temps. The still air in the snow tubes took the windchill out of the factor. Although the air temperature was probably somewhere in the 10s-20s Fahrenheit, we were surrounded by frozen snow at 32 degrees. Not so bad comparatively. If you built the tubes so they would drop down first, and then angled back up, you’d create a cold trap where the cooler, heavier air would sink and the upper parts of the tunnels stayed even warmer.
A few years ago I built an igloo with my kids so they could learn some of the same things about the insulating properties of snow. That was a blast, and they wanted to stay in it all day long… until the roof collapsed a week or two later.
Song Sparrow Pencil Sketch p56
I had a blessed childhood for a myriad of reasons. My parents were big animal lovers, and bordering our backyard was a massive wood lot to explore. Many a summer day was spent flipping over rocks looking for salamanders, playing in the streams, and seeing an occasional screech owl. Those woods had a great collection of wildflowers as well, something I didn’t much appreciate at the time but came to love later. There was a vernal pond that was great for finding frogs and toads. My brother Ted and I would often hike back to it to see the countless frog eggs in the spring and later the millions of tadpoles that emerged.
My brothers and I built a tree fort or two back there with some salvaged lumber from one of my Dad’s projects. When we were in high school in the early 80s, the three of us would take a break from our ten-speeds and race our old banana bikes through the twisting trails in the woods at breakneck speeds. It was a very thin trail, so you took your life in your hands every time you’d try to pass your opponent. The competitive nature of three very closely aged siblings meant that it was worth risking your life for the chance to beat your brother. An added hazard was the fact that we also walked our dog back there. “Unexploded ordinance” from the dog was plentiful to say the least, and occasionally a chunk would fly off the tires up your back or, worse yet, into the face of the second place rider—an added incentive to finish in first place.
Our trail riding happened long before anyone thought about wearing a helmet. No one had a “lid” back then. I think the accepted theory at the time was that if your kid had a deadly riding accident, you’d hose the bike off and have another child. On that trail there were countless wipe outs, pile ups, skinned knees and the dreaded “endo” where you flipped end-over-end. This most often happened when your front wheel hit the rear wheel of the rider you were trying to pass. Of course this stopped your bike instantly but left you with enough inertia to out-flip an Olympic gymnast. I ride a mountain bike all the time now—WITH a helmet—and still marvel at the fact that we didn’t kill ourselves back then. We kept our guardian angels on high alert. Let’s hope they got some hazard pay for dealing with us.
Oh yeah… birds. We always had a bird feeder set up at the house to lure in some of the wildlife as well as plenty of field guides to thumb through. I was familiar with the usual backyard birds and enjoyed watching them, but the birding obsession hadn’t yet struck. One day a small flock of streaky, yellow birds that I didn’t recognize came to our feeder and grabbed my interest. I went through the field guide to discover they were Pine Siskins. “Now, that is a classy bird!” I thought. Not long after that in those same woods behind the house I came across a beautiful black, white and red bird singing up a storm. It was spectacular. Once it flew off I raced back home, pulled out the Peterson’s Guide and discoved that it was a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Those were my “spark birds” that kindled my growing interest in birds.
Like most birders, when I was first getting into the obsession there were many little brown birds that went unidentified. Some birders call them “LBJs” for “Little Brown Jobs.” They can be frustrating to identify for beginners or when you only get a brief glimpse. Fortunately with time they only become easier to ID. It took me a while to really appreciate the beauty of all the LBJs and now they are some of my favorite birds. The sketch of this Song Sparrow is a great example of a bird that probably goes unappreciated by casual observers. These days many of the LBJs are my favorites. I’m crazy about American Tree Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrows. Now, the Fox Sparrow… that is a fantastic bird. I could go on for a long time here, but you get the idea.
Halloween Bird Hats!
This is the sixth year that I’ve made Halloween costumes for one or both kids. I guess they really haven’t been costumes so much as hats. One drawback is that the kids have to spend a lot of time explaining what they are. Last year Kelly’s Kingfisher was primarily mistaken for an Angry Bird and a “jay” but also for a “robin” and a “blue bird.” At least Timmy’s Ivory-billed woodpecker was mostly identified as some sort of woodpecker, although its grumpy look made a few people guess Angry Bird as well. The most entertaining suggestion was pterodactyl. Tonight we’ll see what people guess for this year’s hats.
I always feel pressure to beat the previous year’s efforts. My wife, Liesl, got me to start these earlier this year. That is good and bad. These projects are like a gas… they expand to take up any space they are given. The good news is that for the first time I finished the day before Halloween!
This time I gave the kids one limit when they were selecting their bird of choice: They had to agree on the same basic bird type so I could use the same armature for both. This would streamline my production time… in theory. They ended up choosing to be warblers: a Kentucky and a Blackburnian.
Now for the questions I always get…
How long did those take?
This is pretty much the first question everyone asks when they see these. They are probably evaluating just how crazy I am. Well, the quick answer is, “I really don’t know!” That’s probably for the best, since they get worn for a short period of time. On the other hand, I don’t do much sculptural work anymore, other than 3D on computer, so this keeps some old skills in use. That being said, the hats take a ton of time and could probably be used as evidence that I’m certifiably nuts if my wife ever wanted to have me institutionalized. I think she has a pretty extensive list compiled somewhere. Come to think of it, building an eight-foot tall trebuchet “for the kids” a few years back probably didn’t help my cause.
What are they made of?
The bird hats are made of sheet craft foam, hot glue and acrylic paint. The color choices of the foam are pretty limited for a project like this, so I paint the sheets before cutting them to size (and shape).
Below are previous years’ efforts. You can see how the hats have gotten more complicated with time. At the end are a few shots of them during construction.
Katydid Pencil Sketch p 55
“Grasshopper!” That is the usual answer that I get when people have seen sketches or photos that I’ve taken of katydids. That is a pretty reasonable guess. Katydids, grasshoppers and crickets all belong to the order Orthoptera. The katydids certainly share many characteristics with the grasshoppers like their long rear legs. These interesting insects are also sometimes called “long horned grasshoppers” because of their extra-long antennae, especially when compared to the tiny antennae of grasshoppers.
In actuality they are more closely related to the crickets than the grasshoppers. Katydids are insects in the family Terrigoniidae. They are typically well camouflaged in their leafy habitats. Katydids are primarily nocturnal and are frequently heard calling on warm summer nights. They produce their call by rubbing their wings together in a process called stridulation. One forewing possesses a file-like area, while the opposing one has a plectrum. When rubbed together they make a sounds that some people think sounds like “Katy did, Katy didn’t”. The katydid’s call along with the snowy tree crickets, for me really encapsulates the sound of a summer night.
We get loads of these in our gardens and the kids have become experts at finding these despite their cryptic coloration.
Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Grasshoppers, Crickets, Katydids (Orthoptera) » Long-horned Orthoptera (Ensifera) » Katydids, Camel Crickets, and relatives (Tettigoniidea) » Katydids (Tettigoniidae) » Phaneropterine Katydids (Phaneropterinae)
Ebola Virus Illustrations
Time for a bit of break from the usual animal illustrations. I thought I’d post something from the “Day Job” for a change of pace.
The Ebola virus is on everyone’s mind lately, and I’m no exception. I keep seeing many of the same images, so I thought it might be useful to create some new illustrations of the deadly filovirus.
My first image is an editorial illustration of the virus itself. The second shows the virus in a stylized blood stream; the filoviruses are shown approaching a macrophage, which they use to make a multitude of copies of themselves.
The third illustration shows an interesting viral protein, VP40, from the matrix of the Ebola virus. Viruses have a limited genome to code for proteins. The protein VP40 in the Ebola virus is a bit like the “Swiss Army Knife” of proteins. It has widely varying functions that change when it is assembled as a dimer, hexamer or ocatamer. In this illustration an octamer of the VP40 protein is shown. Eight protein subunits combine to form a torus (donut) shape. In this arrangement the proteins bind to ribonucleic acid (RNA) and are involved in regulation of viral transcription. In its other arrangements VP40 is responsible for giving shape to the matrix of the virus (hexamer arrangement) and transporting proteins (dimer).
An excellent discussion of Ebola Virus Proteins can be found at the Protein Data Bank.
If you are interested in seeing more of my medical and scientific art, visit http://bohanart.com/medical.html.
If you are interested in publishing any of these images, contact me for a rate chart or more information. Additional unpublished images in vertical format are also available.
These images are NOT in the Public Domain.
All content copyright © Matthew Bohan 2014. All Rights Reserved.
Carolina Wren Pencil Sketch p54
One Carolina Wren wasn’t enough! These cute birds can make quite a racket at times. The males are exceptionally vocal, making a “teakettle-teakettle-teakettle” call. These wrens are also known for making nests in odd places. I’ve seen photos of their nests in old cans, boots and pots inside sheds or barns that were left open.
These hardy birds don’t migrate, and therefore have a tough time if the winters are especially severe. They hunker down and try to tough it out. I sympathize with them on the bitter cold and windy February days here in Mid-Michigan. Other than walking the dog, I have the option of staying inside and eating hot meals. It can be tough to be a bird.
Thinking about the challenges that these wrens face reminded me of taking Physiology in graduate school, where we discussed two general “rules” of animal morphology: Bergmann’s and Allen’s Rules.
Bergmann’s Rule generalizes that for populations within a species with a wide geographic range, the more Northern populations tend to be larger. The more massive animals hold their heat better and have increased survival. The larger animals have lower surface area/volume ratios minimizing heat loss. Generally Bald Eagles from Alaska are definitely bigger than those down in Florida.
Allen’s Rule seems like a natural extension of this idea of surface area/volume demands placed on animals in cold environments. This rule generalizes that animals in colder environments should have smaller extremities than those in warmer climates. The long limbs, ears and tails are energetically expensive because the surface area/volume ratio is too high. It simply gets too expensive to heat your body. A good example of this is the Arctic Fox with its tiny ears vs. the desert-dwelling Fennec Fox with its large, radiator-like ears to dump heat.
Lets get back to the Carolina Wrens. When I look at these tiny birds trying to keep themselves warm on blustery, frigid winter day, I think about how little mass they have and their surface area/volume ratios. They scrunch themselves into a small ball shape and puff up their insulating feathers, reducing their surface area/volume as much as possible. I’m amazed that they can find enough fuel to keep their high metabolic needs going. It truly is astonishing.
Carolina Wren Pencil Sketch p52
