[Above drawing done in PaintTool SAI.  The character is Canada (aka Matthew Williams), from Himaruya Hidekazu's (very amusing) historical allegory Axis Powers Hetalia.]

Some unfortunate news this morning: Mr. P, the Phainopepla that has been hanging around Brampton since November, finally succumbed to the scarcity brought on by our harsh northern climate.  Sightings had become very infrequent, and finally late last week he was spotted low in a bush, struggling to harvest rose hips before falling to the ground.  He was taken to a songbird rehabilitation center, where he was eating well and seemed to be recovering, but sadly did not make it in the end.

Sketch done in PaintTool SAI.

Aside from isolating different areas of the artwork for each stage of the process, layers also double as progress snapshots.  The click of a button can peel back each stage all the way to the original rough sketch:

Second layer — the line art:

I drew this one up specifically to play around with Manga Studio’s colour tools.  I had to hunt down a few tutorials for this — layers and palettes are in greyscale mode by default, and it took me awhile to figure out why I couldn’t lay any colours down.  The dodge and burn tools were also hidden away, but I eventually found them in a submenu on the toolbox.  Once I got myself set up, the tools were easy enough to use (though I still have a lot to learn about digitally colouring line art, I think).

The final version, dressed up with with a Sagan quote.  I have some slightly more ambitious science-related illustration stuff in the queue.  This was a fun warmup.

Well, not entirely new.  I’d been eyeing one of these little budget Wacom tablets for awhile, with the intent of using it for some illustration projects that have been bumping around in my head over the past year.  When Amazon dropped the price below $100 back in August, I couldn’t find a good reason to resist any longer and ordered one.  It’s sat in my laptop bag mostly unused since then, but now that winter is here and I’ve been too busy during the limited daylight hours to do much (any) field sketching, I’ve been sating my artistic urges by playing around with some digital ink.  I’ve never used a tablet before, and it takes some getting used to, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

The device ships with Corel Painter Essentials 4 and Photoshop Elements 6.0, which by themselves would have covered the $100 price tag.  I used the latter for the above colour sketch.  The line work looks a bit rough here — freehanding smooth lines with a tablet takes some practice, and I have unsteady hands to begin with.  Unfortunately Elements lacks line correction or bezier pen tools — for that you need to upgrade to the full Photoshop CS4 or find yourself a copy of Illustrator (not chump change) — so I started playing around with a trial version of Manga Studio instead.  It’s awesome.  I love this app.

I did the above character sketch with Manga Studio Debut 4.  As the name indicates, this is comic software, and as such is well tailored to black and white line work.  My Christmas gift to myself was a copy of the EX version, and I spent a lazy Christmas day out at my folks’ place noodling around with it.  The tools are pretty easy to use, though I find the documentation a bit haphazard in its organization, so it’s taking some time to go through it.  Here’s the result of yesterday’s fooling around — I thought it appropriate to do something wintery (despite the mildness and steady rain we had to put up will all day).  Still trying to figure out the settings on the fill tool, so some of the toning was done by hand.

Fun!

I love the crest on this guy.

There were a number of reasons that led me to choose my current place of residence.  Primary among them was the view of the Speed River and its thin strip of woodland habitat, where Osprey would come to fish and the songs of Red-winged Blackbirds and Yellow Warblers would sometimes trickle across the noisy street (important for someone accustomed to far more rural accommodations).  But another reason was its front-row seat to the late summer roosts at Silvercreek Park, and the spectacular natural display that accompanies it.

They begin to gather as early as July — blackbirds, grackles and starlings, though mostly the latter.  Sometimes several hours before dusk, hundreds of birds will appear on the hydro pylons, whistling and squabbling and socializing.  As summer wears on and the days grow shorter, the birds arrive later and later, taking available of as much foraging time as possible before returning to the evening roost.

By October, their numbers have climbed from hundreds into thousands.  They swarm about the pylons like insects, jostling for position on they hydro lines as each seeks to keep a well-defined buffer zone between themselves and their neighbours.  Large flocks rise up again and again and swirl in the skies above.  The noise becomes deafening.  Sometimes, a Cooper’s Hawk will cruise through, contributing to the mass unrest among the birds.

And then, quite suddenly, the entire flock will rise thunderously into the air.  The thousands of little black birds now become a single liquid organism, banking and flowing, splitting off and merging.  It’s an awe-inspiring and complicated pattern, and researchers have spent a lot of time attempting to model the behaviour.  As it turns out, you can closely simulate the dynamics of a starling flock by making each individual entitiy follow three simple rules:

1. Keep a minimum distance between yourself and your immediate neighbours (don’t run into anyone).
2. Match your speed to your immediate neighbours (keep up with everyone).
3. Constantly try to manoeuvre yourself into the perceived centre of the flock (protect yourself from predators).

It’s not clear why starlings perform these massive aerial displays outside of the breeding season.  The socializing that occurs at large roosts may be of immense benefit to individual birds — a bird that did not feed well that day could follow more successful birds out the next morning to a food source, and you are statistically less likely to be picked off by predators during the night when there are thousands of other potential targets all around you.  But the displays themselves (sometimes lasting until well after sundown) remain a mystery.  And when they are over, the entire flock spirals down into the trees, and all at once the roost becomes still and silent.  As if nothing had happened at all.

I don’t know why they do it, but I’m glad to able to witness this incredible phenomenon every evening.

One sunny spring afternoon when I was eleven, I rode my bike down the road to my grandparents’ farm.  As I coasted down the laneway and entered the farmyard, I was startled by a sudden explosion of small, black birds erupting from every nook and cranny of one of the empty poultry barns.  Intrigued, I hopped off of my bike and retreated to a nearby shed to await their return.  One by one they reappeared, clinging momentarily to the barn wall for a wary look ’round before vanishing into their cavity nests.  They were glossy and short-tailed and yellow-billed, and I had no idea what they were.

At school the next day, I took a trip down to the library to peruse their small collection of bird books, where I found a copy of the Golden Birds of North America.  Taking it with me down to my bedroom that evening, I flipped through its crowded pages until I came across an illustration of a glossy black bird with a bright yellow bill — making the first of what would become many bird IDs from that trusty guide.

That’s right.  My spark bird was a European Starling.

No, really.

Starlings are not well loved here in North America.  The first starlings were introduced in 1890 in New York’s Central Park, by an organization seeking to bring all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to the new world (or so the famed story goes).  From that initial group of 60-100 individuals, the population exploded to over two hundred million in a single century, making them one of our most common birds — the quintessential ‘junk bird’ of North American birders.  They are noisy and gregarious, building their messy nests in attics and barbecues and commonly congregating at enourmous urban roosts that plaster the vehicles below in droppings.  As aggressive cavity nesters, they frequently out-compete native birds and have severely contributed to the decline of numerous passerine and woodpecker species.

And yet, I continue to have a strong affection for the birds.  There are comparatively few species that can survive in urban environments, and fewer still that prosper.  In a world where many creatures have been squeezed out of their ancestral homes, starlings have found their niche among us.  Cheerful and adaptable, they can always be relied upon on even the most bitterly cold winter mornings to greet the sun with an exhuberant performance that most birds would save for warmer seasons.  Their massive roosts are accompanied by astonishing displays of synchronous flight, thousands of birds moving as if they were one.  And, years later, I still fondly remember them as the species that sparked what would become a lifelong interest in birdwatching.

Oh, and I never did return that Golden field guide.

On Sunday morning I hit the Arboretum, where I found numerous late fall migrants. I’ve always found Grackles to be such sleek and elegant birds, with their long, wedge-shaped tails and iridescent plumage (though most people seem to regard them as nothing more than a common nuisance).

I snuck out during a small family gathering at my parents’ in the afternoon to check out the old stomping grounds. I flushed a Northern Shrike while walking up the trail — I’m always glad to encounter shrikes, but not so glad to witness so sure a sign of the approaching winter. He stuck around long enough for a single sketch (featuring the back of his head).

An aging Quaking Aspen near the edge of the willow marsh (the only one remaining of four old aspen that used to exist around the property) has always been a magnet for migrant blackbirds, and I found a mid-sized flock of Red-wings and Rustys in its branches. Fall female Rustys sport my favourite blackbird plumage — dark masks and glossy burnt sienna feather fringes against a fierce yellow eye.

And lastly, a colour study of late fall milkweed from along the trailside — my favourite botanical subject.

Red-breasted Merganser

Late last month, I took a week of holidays up at the family cottage near Wiarton.  Birding wise, I definitely could have made a better choice when scheduling my vacation.  We’d just finished three weeks of gorgeously sunny, calm weather and not a drop of rain, the sort of conditions that let migrants stream south unhindered.  Only a handful of warblers remained, and it was just a little too early for the sparrows and thrushes to start coming through in number.  The woods were deathly silent, and the smattering of passerines I did manage to find spent their time high in the canopy and well out of view.

Black-throated Green Warbler

I was lucky enough to encounter a pair of displaying male Ruffed Grouse while slowly driving my car down the bumpy lane that leads out of Bruce Caves Conservation Area.  After a brief tussle, the two went their separate ways and meandered off into the woods.

With little else going on along the trails, I took my equipment down to the shoreline, where the loons were beginning to gather on the bay.  I’ll take them any day.

Regardless of how the birding is … it’s always so hard to go home again in the end.