For those who didn’t see it, here is a small ad I placed in the Seattle Times A section on Tuesday, May 7, 2013.   The copy said:  Sending more coal to China is human cruelty.    Are the people who would have us send more coal to China paying attention to what’s going on there?  As soon as we issue these permits we become morally complicit in the compromised-health of a generation of children.

In recent weeks I have become alarmed that the coal train debate is being reduced to coal dust and having to wait at RR crossings.  These objections certainly have validity, but they obscure the great moral issue that underpins everything:  China is not a democracy, and the people there don’t have legal avenues to protest their government’s over-use of coal.  It’s not an overstatement to say that the health of the coming generation of western Chinese is at risk, including their mental and pulmonary capacities, from pollution caused largely from coal-burning.  Sending them MORE coal should not be on the table for us if we want to  welcomed into, say, a hypothetical place that one might call Heaven where, let’s say, people who haven’t committed morally unacceptable activities could go when they died.

Here is a shot of coal from China from Flickr.  A friend sent it to me, I’ll try to find out who I should credit and where it’s from exactly:

Posted from Seattle, WA May 9, 2013, after return last night from New Mexico and Arizona.

Last Saturday Carroll Dwayne (CD) Littlefield, Delia and I headed East over the pass to visit the old homestead of Shorty Miller.  Shorty was a Depression-era rustler, no relation to present owners of the big ranch to our west. In the spring it’s possible to hope for rain in the Peloncillos, but it’s more likely to blow dust and this is what the White Cliffs looked like as we took off hiking at 6:30 in the morning.

We had been counting birds beginning as soon as we got there on Friday and were at 36.  A Spotted Towhee watched us take off from high in an Alligator Juniper.     Over the pass and heading into Lee’s Canyon we ran into some activity and picked up a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, a Painted Redstart and a Red-faced Warbler (new for me on the Ranch, but no pics for most of these).   Here’s our whole bird list for the trip, starting here:

1.   1.    White-winged Dove

2.   2.    Broad-tailed Hummingbird

3.   3.   Black-chinned Hummingbird

4.  4.     Black-headed Grosbeak

5.  5.     Chipping Sparrow

6.  6.     Lazuli Bunting

PPenstemon pseudospectabulis

7.    7. Mexican Jay

         8. Black-chinned Sparrow

9.     9.  Lucifer Hummingbird

10.   Dark-eyed Junco

11.   Black-throated Gray Warbler

12.   House Finch

The Broad-billed Hummers were mostly visible at the feeders, where they were fighting with a large contingent of Broad-tailed Hummers headed for the Rockies.

13.   Turkey Vulture

14.   Mourning Dove

           We  got to the Lee Place around 11:30.  Lee was a hero for liberty against government repression, i.e., a bootlegger.  Here’s is one of his corrals, and he also built a really nice dam.

      15.  Yellow-rumped Warbler

16.   Rufous-crowned Sparrow

17.   Red-tailed Hawk

18.   Swainson’s Hawk

19.   Bushtit

20.   Bewick’s Wren

21.   Hepatic Tanager

22.   Juniper Titmouse

The California Sisters were out and about.

23.   Crissal Thrasher

24.   Curve-billed Thrasher

25.   Spotted Towhee

26.   Green-tailed Towhee

27.   Black-throated Sparrow

28.   White-crowned Sparrow

29.   Lincoln’s Sparrow

After the Lee Place, the trail follows Miner Canyon through the spine of the Peloncillos.  That’s CD and Delia ahead of me.  CD is the author of “Brids of Malheur” and is a Sandhill Crane expert and is conducting bird transects on the ranch.

30.   Ruby-crowned Kinglet

31.   Violet-green Swallow

32.   Cassin’s Kingbird

33.   Broad-billed Hummingbird

34.   Townsend’s Solitaire

35.   Scott’s Oriole

36.   Western Screech-owl

37.   Ash-throated Flycatcher

This Ash-throated Flycatcher was after an insect and didn’t mind that we were close by. She/he got it.

38.   Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

39.   Red-faced Warbler

40.   Painted Redstart

41.   Cordilleran Flycatcher

42.   Brown-headed Cowbird

43.   Great Horned Owl

There was some standing water in Miner Canyon.  It’s always thrilling to find water in the outback of the Peloncillos.  Once some BP agents drained a water-jug CD (a citizen, of course) had positioned for his return trip.  Not a way to treat human beings, regardless of immigration status.

44.   Montezuma Quail

45.   Canyon Towhee

46.   Warbling Vireo

47.   Wilson’s Warbler

48.   Lark Sparrow

49.   Western Scrub Jay

50.   Common Raven

51.   Bridled Titmouse

52.   Cassin’s Vireo

53.   Virginia Warbler

54.   Gray Flycatcher

We got to Shorty’s around mid-day.  This is what remains of his house.  The bedsprings survive also.  It never ceases to amaze me how much tougher people were less than 100 years ago.  You can see Shorty never was asked “Do you want fries with that?”  He was maybe 17 miles of rough road from town, and that town was Rodeo, New Mexico.  They say he had his own secret path for getting there, and lots of cleverly-designed branding irons that could be superimposed on other brands to make a cow look like his very own, at the risk of sounding here like I’m romanticizing cattle-rustling.

55.   Dusky Flycatcher

56.   Arizona Woodpecker

57.   Acorn Woodpecker

58.   Hooded Oriole

A Hooded Oriole and a Desert Chipmunk. 

59.   Pine Siskin

60.   Brewer’s Sparrow

61.   Peregrine Falcon

62.   Cooper’s Hawk

63.   Bullock’s Oriole   End of bird list for Ranch this visit

Shorty’s situated his homestead close to Maverick Springs, a type of natural formation called a “Tinaja,” (Spanish) that we (the Scholes) have yet to see dry up in the last 38 years.  It’s easy to miss Maverick Springs but CD and Delia always know exactly where it is.

On the way back from Shorty’s we encountered this Hernandez Horned Lizard.  When it sits still, it looks exactly like a rock—it’s about 8 inches long and is an and is an ant-specialist .  The reason I know stuff like this is that CD tells us about anything we come across, nature-wise, in a hike.

Delia and I took a trip down to the valley on Monday and continued birding all day, so our list grew some more:

64.   Pyrrhuloxia

65.   Northern Mockingbird

66.   Loggerhead Shrike

67.   Common Yellowthroat

68.   Barn Swallow

69.   Red-winged Blackbird

70.   American Coot

71.   Scaled Quail

72.   Gambel’s Quail

73.   Cinnamon Teal

74.   Lark Bunting

75.   Western Wood-pewee

76.   Vermillion Flycatcher

We found the Vermillion Flycatcher and these others at Sulfur Tank near Rodeo. 

The San Simon River used to flow through the valley named after it, now the artificial wetland at Sulfur Tank is about all the wet you can usually find.  We try to help a little bit with the cost of pumping.

77.   Virginia Rail

78.   Western Kingbird

79.   Eurasian Collared-Dove

80.   Western Tanager

81.   House Sparrow

82.   Great-tailed Grackle

83.   Cactus Wren

84.   Elegant Trogon

This is an Elegant Trogon in Cave Creek.  This bird was singing by the road, looking gorgeous in the sunlight, for Delia, but of course I had the camera.  This is one of a number of birds that are at risk of being “loved to death” by birders so we did not pursue it for a better shot.

85.   Townsend’s Warbler

86.   Brown-crested Flycatcher

87.   American Robin

88.   Hermit Thrush

89.   Canyon Wren

90.   Brown Creeper

91.   Plumbeous Vireo

92.   Grace’s Warbler

93.   Northern Cardinal

94.   White-breasted Nuthatch

95.   Blue-throated Hummingbird

The Blue-throated Hummingbird was at Cave Creek Ranch (Cave Creek Ranch has a donation jar for non-guests, so we felt fine about visiting the grounds).  We visited with Reed, the owner, who was in the midst of trying to be zen about the reawakening of the Black Bears from hibernation.   The Bear that visited the night before was not the “Polite Bear” who knows how to drain all the feeders without damaging anything.  Regardless, Reed told us, the days of leaving the feeders out all night are over till hibernation begins again next fall.

A Gambel’s Quail at Cave Creek Ranch.

96.   Lesser Goldfinch

97.   Summer Tanager

98.   Inca Dove

99.   Lesser Nighthawk

100.                        Spotted Sandpiper—camped out in the desert, hope it’s ok

101.                        Poor-will

102.                        Western Meadowlark

103.                        Chihuahuan Raven

104.                        Verdin

105.                        Say’s Phoebe  (The numbers didn’t come through to the website it should say 105.)

The Summer Tanager was in “downtown” Portal.  Not shown are the other birds in the vicinity, Bullock’s and Hooded Orioles, Northern Cardinals and Western Tanagers—pretty shockingly bright visuals for Delia and me, who are used to birding in Seattle where not so many birds sport the tropical colors.

But back Peloncillos, I tend to get reminded of a different “tropics:” Paint some black latitudinal striping on those White-tails and wouldn’t it look just like the Kalihari Desert?

Posted April 29, 2013 from Seattle, WA.

The Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival left me with such a good feeling about Grays Harbor, the Festival, the people and the shorebirds that after vending all day at the Festival I decided to postpone the trip back to Seattle and make one last trip out to the boardwalk for shorebirds and the evening air.

I was also trying to get some shots of the spiffy-looking Red-necked Phalaropes that were out in force.  You can see there’s no need to email National Geographic, but I did get a few shots of these gorgeous birds.  And one last sight of them doing 360s like ballerinas.  I know there’s a biological reason they twirl but but it’s a beautiful evening and for now I’m thinking they just do it to be as cool as they can be.  Females are the brighter of the sexes, you know.

On the boardwalk I saw a little critter passing a group of people and thought, “ I don’t remember chipmunk here.”  But it became immediately obvious this was a Weasel, using the boardwalk as a freeway, and it seemed to be in a big hurry.  As the Weasel scurried past me I judged its tail to be longer than 4 inches and therefore decided this was a female Long-tailed Weasel.  Experts are more than welcome to comment on this.

It wasn’t long before the Weasel showed up carrying payload going the other way.  I told a family “Oh, it’s either carrying a baby or maybe it caught something to eat,” the latter thought didn’t sit well with the human mom, who’s kid was very engaged with the scene.   But no need to go there, because as ma-weasel careened by us we could see the baby held gently in her mouth.  It was Weasel-Family-Moving-Day!

She didn’t seem particularly frightened of people, but she did like to give them a wide berth, so whenever she got close to people, she would rocket across to the other side of the boardwalk.

She wasn’t in to resting.

I couldn’t tell by interviewing people how many babies were involved or exactly when this began.  I came in late and only saw two, and didn’t stay either.  From what some people said, I think it might have been four or five.

She seemed to be moving the family about 150 yards.  When someone asked, I speculated that either the area they were living had been hunted-out or there may have been a danger identified there, but that’s speculation.  Moving babies is very routine for many or most Carnivore species, I believe.

On the second run I witnessed she stopped right in front of me to reposition the kid, which I very much appreciated.

Out at the Basin, shorebirds were congregated under the driftwood (I didn’t get any decent shorebird shots, the shot below is from Bottle Beach, 2012) .  No one it seems has seen Red Knots yet (knock on wood, preferably with a knot in it) and there were rumors of thousands of birds this weekend in Humboldt Bay in CA, what’s that a day’s flight from Grays Harbor?  Put Grays Harbor on your list of possible trips next weekend, it could be good, and the area is looking beautiful in it’s own “spring plumage.”

 Below is Bottle Beach, the land-side. 

Posted from Seattle April 22, 2013.

The ad shown is running the A-section of the Seattle Times on Tuesday the 23^rd.

The Seabird poster got printed at Olympus Press this morning.  As usual, the press folks at Olympus got it looking even better than the proof and they’ll be delivered tomorrow or Thursday, in time to be at the Shorebird Festival.

I’m working on the file of the painting “Sunbreak at Bottle Beach,” which I’ve been working on for the Festival.  I like it, but I wouldn’t have minded having six more years to get the details right.  I’ll post that if and when I get it beaten into submission.

Posted April 12, 2013 from Seattle, WA

Scroll down for April 17 Update!

It’s official!!!   I’m going to be at the Gray’s Harbor Shorebird Festival, the big shindig in honor of the thousands of shorebirds that migrate through the Gray’s Harbor area in April and May.  The headquarters will be at Hoquiam High School on Fri-Sun April 27-29.

Going to a big Shorebird Festival with no new shorebird paintings is not an option.  That’s a non-starter.   Telling people you don’t have anything new is never any fun.  

That’s why I’m in a mad scramble to finish this painting.  I’ve got to resist the temptation to keep adding birds.  What I have is done at extreme high speed, in fact, I started this this morning, but things always go fast in the beginning, before the inevitable bogging down occurs.  The key here is to keep up the speed.  Sometimes that has a favorable effect on the quality anyway.

The species diversity is high for Bottle Beach, where the scene is envisioned, but not impossible.  All these birds were there the last time I was there, in April of last year, but not in these close quarters and not with so few of the standard species, which are more or less Western Sandpipers, Dunlin and Short-billed Dowitcher.  Also in the painting are Black-bellied Plover, which is the big one, a Red Knot and a Ruddy Turnstone, the colorful one, although they are all colorful.  I’d like to stick a Semipalmated Plover in but it might lose credibility.  They are pretty common there but if I max out on diversity of species with a tiny number of total individuals it won’t look like what you normally see at Bottle Beach.

Some may say it already doesn’t look like Bottle Beach.  Isn’t that sunlight flooding the picture?

See you at the Shorebird Festival!!!

Update, April 17 2013

This is what the painting looks like now–April 17, 2013.  I seem to be sacrificing realism in this scene a little bit, I fear that introducing a more naturalistic color of the beach, what will all the umbers that you get in WA state, might overcome the painting with dreariness.  The thing is, I don’t have 6 months to dink around on this, I’m basically really happy with it, so I’m going to go for an early wrap-up on the painting and try to get it photographed and published in time for the Shorebird Festival.    Maybe I’ll do one really big print of it to double as a sign at the Festival.

While I’m updating, I’m putting 97% of my effort on shorebirds, but I couldn’t help trying to get the Eagle at Deception to work.  This is where it stands now.  I’m curious, if I have two versions at the store, one with an Osprey and one with an Eagle, how they will sell—It’s not a given that the Eagle will do better.  I’ve never found Eagles to be all that easy to sell, which could reduce two ways, either having to do with their popularity or my ability to paint them. 

 But I digress–See you in Hoquiam!!!

 I was just at the Optometrist’s office, I recommend it, it’s nice to be able to read again, plus you get to answer the question “Is Number one better, or is Number two better?” quite a lot.

Well, the same with this blog.

  I’m trying to decide which are the best to put on the next offset litho printing, and which version of which painting, so I have a lot of “Number one or number two?” questions.

For instance, is Deception Pass better in the older version with an Osprey, shown below.

Or is it better with a Bald Eagle, which is not finished, but getting there.  I have no idea, time sometimes forces the answer.

Then there’s Sunrise Point with an American Kestrel, that’s the old version, number one.

Or Sunrise Point with a Gray Jay, Number 2.

How about neither of those and going with a painting I abandoned a while ago.  It was sitting in the living room and a friend complemented it and that was all that was needed to get me furiously working on it again as though I hadn’t rudely dropped it for a calendar year.  It has the advantage that it’s spring flowers, and although I have lots of Market flower paintings, I don’t have any spring flower paintings of the Market.

I also got back to work on a painting that was finished years ago but that I did not like the printing of.  It’s of the upland gamebird formerly known as Blue Grouse, with four chicks.  That’s Mt. Rainier from Spray Park.

The other contender is this Poulsbo Marina painting.  I sure like it, not sure how much others like it.  Delia finally found a name that I love:  Winter Goldeneyes, Poulsbo.  I had been hung up on the fact that they are Barrow’s Goldeneyes and that just makes for a bad title.  For one spot on the upcoming printing, Pike Place Wheelbarrow is #1 and Poulsbo is #2.

In recent years waiting for a Violet-green Swallow family to get settled at our house has been a bit tortuous.  Swallows dislike really bad weather even more than people do, and in miserable springs a male would show up in the morning in a stiff blowing 45-degree rain, wait for a female in vain for an hour or so, and then leave for better foraging near a low-lying meadow or wetland or a lake.  (Swallows have no use for the astro-turf that our dear Seattle Parks Dept. and the UW have fallen in love with.)

 This is the would-be Dad.  My horrible photo doesn’t show its colorful bright green and lavender back.

This year we’ve got this warm weather.  (Warm-dry weather can also be a problem for Swallows).   On the 28^th a big squad of Violet-green Swallows came into the neighborhood.  They headed straight to our boxes, as always.  It’s quite obvious they remember exactly where they are.   There was much excitement and some mild fighting (Violet-greens are a fairly peacable species) and obviously a decision ensued as to who would be the male and who would be the female owners of the box. 

This is the female.  They didn’t sit as close to each other as is normal, I hope this isn’t an arranged marriage!

We have three boxes in front and two in back that may not be as appealing to the birds because there are nearby tree branches and roof areas that could be predator platforms.  We’ll see which one they choose.

This used to be an abundant bird in Seattle.  Nobody seems to know anything about why it is in a state of collapse in the upland neighborhoods of Seattle and the issue hasn’t gotten on the radar anywhere, although it was discussed for a couple days on tweeters, the birding chatline, last year.  Bad weather is the simplest explanation for the decline and it is well-known that even before climate-forcing was an issue, Swallows lived or died by the weather.

We are delighted to be their hosts and wish them luck this season.

(If anyone has Swallows hunting for nest-sites, and wants to put up a box in a good location (close up under eaves to protect from Crows and Jays, no platforms for cats to watch and jump within 12 or 15 feet, email me at ednewbold1@yahoo.com    This is not about selling you anything)

 Here is shot of a flying male Violet-green Swallow by Marv Breece, who held the WA state Big Year record for years.  This remains my favorite wildlife shot of all time.  (I have a yardstick.  I learned more from this shot than I usually do from a photo and I was forced to upgrade my view of the aesthetics of a relatively common bird that I thought I knew everything about.  Also, the shot is cropped, but notice the bird has a shadow and a reflection that can be compared) Because the birds are small and fast and often are above us humans rarely see the violet, but this shot shows the violet and also shows the fighter-jet profile these cool little birds make in flight.

 If I had asked an expert in the 1970s if the Parakeet Auklet should be included on a Seabirds of the Northwest Poster, I’m sure they would have said, “No, you don’t run into those until you get pretty far up into Alaska.”

But a few weeks ago Ryan Merrill and Scott Mills conducted a survey of seabirds off the WA and OR coasts  and they found Parakeet Auklet to be the second most common bird, with about 2400 seen.  I don’t know if this is surveillance bias or something else—I’ll ask the next expert I see, it could be that Parakeet Auklets are wintering further south than they used to.

But in any case, this makes them the Ferris Wheel of the Seabird poster.  I had to go back and redo the Seattle skyline painting to get the Ferris Wheel in.  Now I’m going to insert this painting shown of Parakeet Auklets into the Seabird poster.  The poster sans Parakeets is below, I’ll put them next to the little Murrelets.

It’s cute bird, small, the same size as a Marbled Murrelet which is the length of a Robin.  I hope my painting does it justice, and if no one else has said this: Welcome to WA state bird status, Parakeet Auklets!

Two birds that I am controversially not including are Arctic Loon and Thick-billed Murre.  Both are very rare and closely resemble species that are relatively common, so I feel their inclusion would actually mar the poster in the sense that it would mislead anyone who wasn’t already well-versed in NW Seabirds.

Seabirds of the Northwest is finished and will be available in 12 x 16 and 18 x 24 soon at the store.  The 12 x 16 should be on the website soon.

Seabirds represented a departure in that I painted 7 large paintings of Seabirds and combined them on the computer, rather than painting the whole poster on one board that would have been much smaller in total scale.  I’ll be doing posters the new way from now on as it affords maximum flexibility and realism.  I believe that stems from the huge reduction in size from painting to poster, which is favorable.

Whether Seabirds will do anything commercially we’ll see, I guess.  Despite the fact that this is probably the best place in the world to watch and see Seabirds in the winter, I notice that Seabirds generally  don’t seem to register with people.   Also, there have been massive reductions in the numbers of many of our Seabirds, particularly Western Grebes.  A bird that doesn’t exist is unable to captivate a young person’s mind. 

Now on to another declining subject, snow.  I have two paintings of snow at the Market, and I was dead set on the second one being the better of the two when I unexpectedly came upon the first one and was kind of captivated by it.  Now I’m not sure.

This was the second painting, which was the frontrunner in my mind all last year to be published offset litho as print and notecard.  If I do use this I may have to go back to painting on the painting and get it scanned again.  There seem to be issues with it.

This is the earlier painting which I almost threw out, but recently became enamored of.  It might be the more compelling image at a very small size.

It’s the Year of the Snake and I’m jumping on the bandwagon!

I have my own photo ref of only three or four species of snakes.  It comes from living in the Northwest, where snakes can be an afterthought. But we are in New Mexico a lot, so  I’m doing a Blacktail Rattler.  I have one decent ref shot of one that I found all curled up and ready to strike. (Blacktails have never ever killed a person as far as I know.)  The Gopher Snakes (close to the Bull Snakes that are rare on the West Side here) down there can be 5 or 6 ft. long and they hunt the Blacktails, I believe.  Delia thought I should do a Gopher Snake but I didn’t think the head is as handsome as the Blacktail’s.  There are Sonoran Whiptails down there also, which are probably closely related to the Racers, those are impressive snakes that move really fast and specialize in birds, but they are just too ectomorphic.  I’d do one of the really gorgeous snakes like a Coral or King Snake but I don’t have the ref and I’ve never seen either.

 Meanwhile, I got another panel for the Seabird painting finished.  This one is the Loons, Tufted Puffin, and two plumages of Long-tailed Duck.   Don’t worry about the relative sizing or positioning, I’m painting first and planning later this time, and we’ll see if that was a good idea soon enough.