Happy Daylight Savings Time 2018!

Black-capped Chickadee

Here comes the sun. After 10 months, I am happy to be back drawing and blogging on the natural world.  The first day of Daylight Savings Time is always special to me because we are moving closer to spring. Today through our tired haze, we begin to notice changes not only in the length of day but in the creatures in our environment. Spring brings the excitement of migrating birds, but in this period of transition, it’s also good to think about those steadfast birds that stayed with us through snow and sleet and brought us a bit of feathered magic. 

The Audubon Society has named 2018 the Year of the Bird—a year to look more closely at the birds in our neighborhoods and even to go looking for more birds in parks, botanical gardens, woods, and forests. When you do this, you are likely to see the bird that I have drawn here: the Black-capped Chickadee, Poecile atricapillus.  It is one of the 10 most-reported birds from the 2017 Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) that takes place every February and one of the 13 most-common backyard feeder species.  The black-capped chickadees typically eat suet, seeds, peanuts, and insects.  Researchers have found that the birds cache seeds to eat later and they remember thousands of hiding places.  You may need binoculars and cameras to get a good look at shyer birds, but the black-capped chickadee is pretty easy to spot and fun to watch and draw. 

The black-capped chickadee, the state bird of Massachusetts and Maine, is a songbird whose song in most of North America is “fee-bee” or “hey sweetie.”  When alarmed the call changes to “chickadee-dee-dee” and according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All about Birds website:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-capped_Chickadee/sounds, the more alarmed they are, the more “dee” notes are added to the call. And when things get really bad they make a high-pitched “see” call and the birds know to freeze in position until they hear the “chick-a-dee” signifying “all clear.”  Pretty impressive defense strategy for birds tinier than sparrows.

  

 I did this watercolor as part of a class on bird illustration that I took last year at the NYBG with Katie Lee, http://www.katieleeartist.com, a wonderful botanical and wild life illustrator.   She teaches classes in Maine and occasionally comes down to NY to teach at the Botanical Gardens.  She is an exceptional teacher, and I was fortunate to take her class.