Artwork--Palm and Chestnut-sided warblers

 So many trips, so little time!! So many birds! So many exciting things going on!

Life around here has been absolutely nuts, and I have not found time to do any blogging. Spring is always busy as we get ready for the show season as well as cleaning up the place after a long winter. This winter was of course longer than most. We had snow on the ground until late April, and there is STILL ice on Lake Superior.

I have managed to get a good number of pieces done this year. I have such a backlog of images to wade through! I want to do some waterfowl--I get a lot of requests for ducks--but I decided to do a few "quickies" instead and picked some warblers (anything that involves water is NOT quick).  As I've broadened my birding experience, I wanted to also broaden the subject matter I do. It's a bit of a risk--my most popular pieces are the ones that depict birds and animals people know well, and warblers aren't really known to anyone but a birder. That said, birding is huge in this country, and getting huger every day, so it's worth the risk.

The Chestnut-sided warbler is one I photographed at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in June of 2012. We were hiking through a marsh when I heard him singing. He was not hard to locate, perched atop a white cedar right out in the open. I couldn't decide to do one of him singing or not, but I liked this pose best.

"Chestnut-sided"  8 x 10, framed to 11 x 14

The Palm warbler is a bird I saw in our front meadow last spring. I spotted him when I was walking the dogs. What caught my eye was his constant tail pumping--I knew right away it was not a common bird for us, just by that motion. I ran the dogs back and got my camera. He was still there, working over the previous year's wild bergamot, gleaning insects and spiders. This was the 84th species to be identified on our property.

"Eighty-four"  10 x 8, framed to 14 x 11

So it is going to be a while before I get to write again. I am headed to Alaska tomorrow with my mom and her sister for a 10-day guided birding trip! We will spend 3 days in Nome, several days down in Kenai NWR and will sail on Resurrection Bay, then a few days in Denali. I can't even imagine how many images I'm going to return from this trip with--I'm going to need a week at the computer just to sort through all the photos I keep taking, going back to our trip to Theo Roosevelt last August. It's kind of embarrassing, but I guess it's a good problem to have!