The Rack and Pecker

Freshly done oil painting- title might also make a good name for a gastropub in Cape Town.   

Wind-shy shanks

A stiff breeze today and the Greenshank really don't like it.   Other roosting waders not bothered, but the G'shanks running to get in the lee of some muddy lumps.   30-40 in the roost this week, including 4 pristine juveniles and the colour-ringed adult RR-OW who breeds in Sutherland and has wintered here since at least 2010.

Dog day of summer

Small pic of a very big moment- Wild Dog has been right at the top of my most wanted list for simply years, but I've been too stubborn to go to Mana Pools or any of the other few places where they are twitchable.  This pack is denning against all the odds in the heavily-grazed Masaai lands east of the Serengeti- currently enjoying a fragile truce with the locals, but goodness knows that the future holds for them.

Fish-flushing falco

Quick 'n' messy pic of a first-summer Hobby at Minsmere- fish fry were jumping for their lives each time the H swooped in to take 4-Spot Chasers low over the water.

Hobby from Bittern Hide Minsmere

When there was no green

Little Grebe at Island Mere in May.   July just isn't my time, what with everything parched and stripes of lurid green overall.  So this afternoon I grabbed an old canvas and finished these from Minsmere, when the sky was blue, but all was still sepia and sienna. 

3DH

Still playing with Hobby headshapes and getting the eyes in right place- here's a try-out at a 3D model rendered in shiny blue to reflect a fine summer's day.

Hobbies and black holes

This version of an Island Mere Hobby should have been done/painted/posted/filed last month, but it went all muddy on me and had to be hosed down and re-painted:  now it's done I think, although I'm still puzzling over whether to paint in a hint of the eye that is in shade.  It will go wrong for sure if I try..

It's a tricky one- usually when I see a Hobby you just don't quite get the eye-ring, but still when you paint a Hobby, things just seem not right until you stick it in.

Here's another from a couple of years ago initially painted as seen (so dark holes where eye should be) but I've recently cracked and dabbed in some detail.  It looks better for it [feet are still too lumpy and prominent but that can be fixed another day].

Here's weird looking Hobby with wrong-shape eyebrow and no eye-ring..

Improved Hobby below with a bit of face detail in roughly the right places.