Backyard Bird Bulletin

Camouflaged Baby Birds in the Nest watercolor and ink by Meera Rao

I have to catch up with my postings - I am a year and some months behind with posting the 2021 sketches and about 20 weeks late with 2022 sketches! But I am sketching :)  

I always get excited when the sketch of the week serendipitously matches the concept shown in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar that I have repurposed for sketching the ongoing pandemic years!! For this week it is birds and nests.  It is not a surprise that spring days means I will find a nest or two tucked away in the trees and bushes in the yard.  I am not sure if the four baby birds I saw in this nest in the holly tree are Carolina wrens or Northern Mockingbirds - both were near by chirping away. So I am sure there was another nest near by as well.   I was being very careful not to disturb the chicks or alarm the parents but hearing the birds call insistently I guess that did not work!  

Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2021 week 12 March 14-20 

The hand colored lithograph shown in the Calendar is by John Gould(1804-1881) from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives: Campylopterus delattrei  Plate 42 from A Monograph of the Trochilidae, or Family of  hummingbird, vol 2, 1849.

  

"The five volumes of Gould's 'A Monograph of Trochilidae feature breathtaking illustrations of hundreds of hummingbird species. Gould was a prolific British ornithologist known for identifying 'Darwin's finches.'  For this book Gould drew and lithographed all the plates with British printer Henry Constantine Richter (1821-1902)"

I hope some day I will be able to check out the lithographs in person! 

The Osprey Returns!  Ink and watercolor by Meera Rao 

I had marked on my calendar to check for Ospreys' arrival and they migrated up north a week earlier in March. They started work on their nest right away, finishing it within two days. They nest on the same post in the river every year.  They had to build the nest from scratch this year as the nest from past years had been blown away in one of the storms earlier in the year.  I was delighted to find the Osprey in its perch on the pine tree in yard where they regularly enjoy their meal of freshly caught still alive wriggly fish held securely in the claws.  (Unfortunately, we lost that tree couple of weeks ago in a storm and now his/her new perch can't be seen from my kitchen window.) 

Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2022 week 12 March 13-19 

The Red eyed tree frog Agalychnis callidryas , digital photograph by Steve Paton,  November 2019 is from the collection of Republic of Panama Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.  "Red-eyed tree frogs distract predators by flashing their bright red eyes, orange webbed feet, and blue and yellow racing stripes. whether they survive habitat destruction is another story, one in which Smithsonian research plays a leading role."  I doubt though that the fish the osprey catch get any kind of warning signs before they are scooped up!