Red-necked Phalaropes

 Towards the end of my stay I found 5 red-necked phalaropes on a small fish pond behind the mudflats. The are one of my favourite families and I spent a lot of time sketching and photographing them.

 The flock were made up of 2 males and 3 females in various stages of moult. Above are the 2 males, below females.

 Its often hard to comprehend the size of these birds sometimes, seeing them feeding amongst little grebes was a great reminder of how small they really are!

Asiatic Dowitcher

I found this summer bird on the 16 of May on the fish ponds and it remained until the next day. Unfortunately it showed up the morning after my friend left, and both days the weather was awful. I was able to get very close and settle down for some sketching. The constant drizzle made painting a little messy and I was never happy with the shape or character of my sketches.

I spent a lot of time sketching the bird but it was constantly feeding. It disappeared both days for a few hours and I couldn't find it on any of the nearby ponds, so  I assume it was asleep somewhere quite.

Spoon-billed sandpipers!

I have just had the chance to scan a few images from my trip to Rudong. The whole area was fantastic despite all the land reclamation and construction. We managed to see several spoon-bills but it was a lot tougher than I thought. Picking the birds out of a roosting flock of red-necked stints was nearly impossible, and nearly every time we did pick one up the whole flock would fly for seemingly no reason. On one of our last evenings we finally found a bird close to the road and were able to watch for a long period in relative comfort and great light. As the tide dropped we were able to follow it out onto the mud and continued to get great views.

Most of the time watching the birds were spent photographing the them as the encounters were quite brief. The drawing above was done from a short video the evening after.

I generally scanned the roosting flocks as they arrived, but after a  few pans of the scope I would settle down for some sketching. On one of these occasions, I started sketching some roosting terek sandpipers and a spoon-billed sand wandered infront of them! But as usual, the whole flock flew off shortly after.

Terek Sandpipers and spoon billed sand.

Nearly there!

 I have spent the last few weeks working on my final college projects and am almost there, just one more to go and have that in hand, I hope! I am also hoping that this time next I will be watching a spoon-billed sandpiper or two in Rudong, China. There have been a few seen there already this spring, fingers crossed they remain for another while.

 I finished off the the harrier and pipit plates for one of the final projects a while back but havn't found the time to put them up or lay them out in  a spread yet. With most of the pressure off now, I hope to get some time to work on layouts next week before I head off.  Above is Montagus harrier.

 Pallid Harrier

 Northern Harrier

 Hen Harrier

Tree and Olive-backed Pipits

Sinensis Cormorants again

I was passing Swords yesterday so decided to pop in for a while as it has been so long since I have been out in the field. Driving along the river on the north side I picked up the 1st winter sinensis feeding close to the bridge. It was difficult to follow through the trees along the road, but eventually it sat out under the flyover. 1 ruff and an adult little gull showing the start of a hood showed nicely infront of the dog kennels.

While out on a break this morning I finally pinned down an adult sinensis that had been present all winter on the canal near my house. Most times I saw it I was on the bike and it would dive, re-surfacing 30-40 metres away so I could never confirm it. Other times I saw it from the car as it sat on street lights but views were never clear enough.

Was delighted to finally be able to confirm it before it departed. It has been niggling me all winter because it has been so close to the house. The  ring-billed gull seems to have left, I last saw it on waste ground a week ago. Still no signs of spring, not a single migrant yet.

Harrier project

As part of one of my final college projects I have been working on identification plates for harriers in Ireland. I am only half way through the plates, but as part of another class I have to lay them out as they would appear in a book spread. I am planning to finnish them off with my own text, at the moment it is just a dummy text. 

 Northern harrier, I am still learning the best ways to paint on the card. I am finding it a much easier surface to work on than water colour paper for finer detail, but am still struggling a lot with larger areas of colour. I find that a lot of my usual process's when working with water colour paper are the opposite of how I work on the card.

 Pallid harrier. I tried quite a few approaches with this plate, starting with darks and lights in some images and with the lights building to dark in others. I really like some of the results but am finding the consistency difficult to maintain.

 I was trying to come up with a few rough layouts for a finished book spread, trying to keep it simple, clear and easily read. With the easter break starting this weekend I hope to get all the illustrations finished and a layout template settled on.

I have also been working on a few logos, collared flycatcher was an obvious choice.

Local patch

 I have seen the ring-billed gull almost daily lately on my way to and from college. It was around this time last year that he disappeared, so I spent lunchtime today sketching and photographing him. I was finally able to lure him down off his favourite roof having ignored my bread on previous visits.

 Also along the canal were atleast 3 scandinavian jackdaws, all of which frustratingly stayed on the far bank! An adult brent goose has been with the mallard for atleast 2 weeks now. I thought originally that it must have been injured, but it looks in good health.

 I have been working away on college work for the last few weeks, above is some of my rough work and studies for my plates on Irish harriers.

 I have done a few illustrations of acrocephalus warblers recently, above is a water colour on card study of a Blyth's reed warbler.