Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 Week 13

Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 Week 13 March 22-28 

Sheltering at home gave us ample time to really observe nature by just looking out the window any time of the day or night !!! Every morning there were many pelicans and cormorants flying and swimming around to catch their meal. Pelicans glide low over the water or cruise high and then dive bomb into the water for fish. Cormorants ease their head into the water and dive to catch their pray and emerge elsewhere from the water. After a dive the cormorants sit on the dock or the poles in the water and spread their wings to dry in the sunlight. Often I see cormorants and Pelicans sharing the space on the dock sunning or resting peacefully.  This one time I saw these two birds among a dozen others standing next to each other - it looked to me like there were exchanging notes about where to find the best catch ! But during my research I discovered that they usually do co-exist peacefully most probably because they don’t fish at the same depths. 

Cormorants are an ancient species whose ancestors lived during the time as dinosaurs and the oldest Pelican fossils are from around 30million years ago. Once again my sketches go well with the photo for that week in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020 :’Tyrannosaurus rex - Hell Creek Formation, McCone county Montana’ at the National Museum of Natural History -.  And it was not a surprise that looking at  my  photos and sketches that week, this subject jumped out making it an easy decision. 

Pelican and Cormorant watercolor and ink by Meera Rao