Author: corvidsketcher

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Right Time and Place: Black Terns

A lot of birding is dumb luck.

It about being in the right place at the right time. You happen to be there, the Davis Water Treatment Plant, at the right time, ten minutes before noon on May 4, 2019. If you were here ten minutes too early or ten minutes too late, the birds would have been missed.

Black tern is bird that I have wanted to add to my lifelist list for a long time. It is a bird seen in transit in the Central Valley as it heads north in the spring to the small ponds and lakes of its breeding grounds in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada.

It does seem to be a matter of luck and being in the right time in the right place and May at the Woodland Water Treatment Plant was the right time and place. Black tern had been seen here in the previous days so Dickcissel and I reckoned our changes were pretty good.

After a two and a half hour search, it seemed pretty clear that black tern was not here and whatever birds that had been seen on the previous days had headed on north.

So we decided to head over to the nearby Davis Water Treatment Plant and try there. That morning a rare ruddy turnstone and two black turnstones were being seen. These birds are normally seen on the coast and can be common on the California coast. And if we were persistent enough, we could pick through the dowitchers to find a lone Baird’s sandpiper.

As we pulled up there were already four birders scoping the ponds, no doubt looking at the wayward turnstones. We pulled up to park when we noticed two dark, long-winged short-tailed terns. Black terns!!! Once parked we got out our bins on this much sought after species that had alluded me in California, Texas, and Central America.

The two terns past back and forth over the ponds for about five minutes and then unceremoniously disappeared from our lives. If we had dilly dallied five minutes longer at Woodland, we would have completely dipped on these terns. Such is birding.

After getting our fill of dowitchers, turnstones, and the lone Baird’s, we headed further down the road to scope the avian life on some other ponds.

We were entertained by a pair of killdeer that wandered around the road way, looking at us with their large, inquisitive eyes and calling their eerie call. I though it odd that they were hanging around and the broken-wing display should have really been a hint but I had black tern on the brain.

A quick killdeer field sketch.

A quick search of the opposite side of the road explained the killdeer’s behavior. There were four very camouflaged eggs among the rocks on the side of the road in a rocky scape that is a killdeer’s “nest”. We were way too close for the killdeer so we promptly headed back to the car and hightailed it out of there.

Just like the two black terns!

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Travel Sketching Kit

(Warning: this post is a bit of a sketching geek out)

Refine, refine refine.

That is the keyword when it comes to travel.

Each time I travel I want to pack lighter and bring even less than my previous trip. Travel experts say to lay everything out before you pack and then get rid of half. And I try to follow that advice with varying degrees of success.

This also applies to my sketching kit for this trip-of-many-sketches. I wanted to bring fewer things. Fewer sketchbooks, pens and pencils, and paints. I was hoping that limiting my sketching gear would encourage me to sketch more and make it my daily practice when I was on the road. I wanted to see if traveling light would be more freeing and more productive in a sketcher’s paradise like Barcelona.

First I needed to find the right bag.

If your sketching supplies are not easily assessable you don’t sketch as often. So I knew access was a key feature in choosing a bag.

I have previous used a lighter weight Chino bag which has one pocket and a larger main pocket which you wear around a shoulder like a murse (a man-purse) but for this trip I was looking for something more rugged and functional with more internal organization.

I also wanted a sling bag and not a backpack for two reasons. First I wanted easy access and a sling bag could be easily moved from my back to my front meaning that the zippered compartments would be almost right under my chin. Secondly I would be traveling to the “Pickpocket Center of the Universe”, Barcelona. A sling bag can be easily adjusted from my back to under my arm up front if I was in thick crowds in tourist zones or riding the Metro (both hot spots for petty crime). This meant that the sling bag had many advantages to a backpack.

After doing a little research I settled on Patagonia’s Atom 8L. This seemed to have all the features I was looking for. It was a compact sling bag with a divided main compartment for sketch books and a smaller zippered pocked for paints and an even smaller pocket that could hold my Escoda travel brushes. The exterior had two compression straps to keep things tidy and which also could be used to hold a rolled up lightweight jacket (such as my Patagonia micro puff). The bag comes in many colors but I went with a classic black.

Once I decided on a bag it put limitations on the size and number of sketch books I could bring with me. This was a good problem to have. The three sketch books I brought were:

  1. A Hahemuhle Nostalgie Sketch Book (5.83” X 4.13”). This is a true sketch book that was small but could take a light watercolor wash.
  2. A Pentalic Aquabook (5.5” X 5.5”), this is a medium sized book with quality watercolor paper, good for sketching in a perfect square or a 5.5” X 11” panorama. (One downside with this book was that due to an manufacturing flaw, the pages started to fall out).
  3. A Strathmore Watercolor Book (5.5” X 8”). This book contains quality watercolor paper and was great for cityscapes and birds. This book was the true workhorse of the trip.

To hold my pens and pencils I brought a simple flat pencil case that I could easily fit into the main compartment of my pack. I attached a small carabiner to the loop so I could hang the bag from my pack while I was field sketching.

Inside were my favorite assortment of pens, pencils and a water brush. For this trip I favored two pens: Staedtler permanent Lumocolor sizes S and F.

My paint palette that I normally use would prove a problem because it was too big (it was really designed for studio and not field work). So I knew I needed a major downsize for my palette. I found the solution at California Arts Supply. They carry a small MEEDEN painting tin that holds 12 pans in a box about the size of an Altoids box.

This palette was the perfect size and could easily fit into a shirt or pants pocket. Now the really hard decision was, which paints would I put in the 12 pans? I settled on: Payne’s gray, violet shadow (Daniel Smith), burnt umber, burnt sienna, sap green, olive green, Quinacridone Gold, cobalt blue, ultramarine, violet, Winsor red, Winsor yellow, and a smudge of sepia. Yes I know I couldn’t resist sepia.

For brushes you can’t beat my Escoda Prado travel brushes which I originally bought for a trip to Madrid. The faux sable hairs retain water and keep a sharp point. The tip seats into the handle but when the brushes are put together, they are close to the size of a full brush, which is a huge advantage over other travel brushes.

The other advantage is that Escodas are a Barcelona brush maker. Escoda have been making brushes since 1933 and it is a family owned company now run by a third generation.

Did this new set up help me sketch more? Well the proof is in the drawings. Over the 14 days I was in Spain, I completed 63 sketches. Not a bad haul.

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Greater Flamingo in the Ebro Delta

Ebro Delta.

This was our last stop on the birding tour and one of the most sought after birds for me was the greater flamingo. I wasn’t sure if we would see any or even, how many, but within a few minutes of being in the proper habitat I saw one of these beautiful birds flying low over the water. Almost like a pink golf club with black and pink wings.

A “lawn” flamingo in a drought resistent Sunset District “lawn”.

The flamingo it truly an iconic bird. Iconic because I think that most of the world could identify a picture of a flamingo without every seeing one in real life. It’s is also a common bird in many zoos and in some parts of North America it is a common lawn “bird”.

This trip was already full of birds that only lived in field guides and BBC nature documentaries and it was amazing to see this flamingo being a flamingo in its native setting. This was no zoo and the flamingos wore no tags on their long legs. Here on the southeastern coast of Spain, these beautifully odd birds were free flying.

Flamingo group with a young one, Ebro Delta.

There is something beyond mere words to seeing natural behavior in a natural habitat. Watching the flamingos “swanning” was incredible. The flamingo could exploit so many food resources because of its long legs and neck.

A group of “swanning” greater flamingos. Their long legs allows them to wade into much deeper water than any other bird giving the impression that they are large pink swans floating on the water’s surface.

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Wallcreeper

We stayed in the Hecho Valley for three nights. This was because we might need that time to look for two of the seminal birds of this area: the lammergeier and wallcreeper. We had been very lucky to get lammergeier on our very first day of the tour. So that left us to find the little pink-winged gray moth-like cliff dweller.

We left our dwellings in the Hecho Valley and within 20 minutes we were at Boca del Infierno, a known hotspot for the wallcreeper.

Hecho-Room View

A sketch from my room balcony in the Hecho Valley.

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Boca del Infierno, one of the hotspots for the sometimes elusive wallcreeper.

Bird life was just starting to become active in the cold early morning and we looked at an avian world that was just stirring from the roadside. We had not been at the pullout for more than ten minutes when our guide spotted a wallcreeper, working the cliff on the opposite side of the road!

The cryptic-colored wallcreeper at Boca del Infierno.

Here was a bird that I thought, if I were lucky, might see on a distant rock face, only with the aid of a scope. But here was the prize of the Pyrenees no more that 30 yards up a rock face! What a lifer! The wallcreeper was easily observed with the naked eye. It was really that close!

We headed down the road in search of dipper, which we didn’t dip on and when we returned to the van, we spotted another wallcreeper on the opposite side of the gorge. A two wallcreeper day is not a bad haul!

A few days later, while birding at Mallos de Riglos, sight of our first lammergeier, we found an unexpected avian delight. Another wallcreeper which we assumed would be up at elevation in April but here was the bird standing out against the burnt Sienna cliffs of Mallos de Riglos.

A wallcreeper showing up a bit better on the cliffs of Mallos de Riglos.

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The Lammergeier

One bird stood out for me when I was flipping through the pages of Birds of Europe about eight years ago. It was the first bird featured in the Birds of Prey section which featured vultures, hawks, kites, eagles, and falcons. This showed the bird and it’s shadow as it cruised the hight mountains, another illustration showed the bird picking through the bones of a former animal as two ravens look on. This was the oddly named lammergeier (lamb vulture in German), a bird I associated with Africa or even Asia but not Europe. And the tiny smudge on the range map indicated that that they occupied a small area near the Spanish-French border and the purple color told me that this large vulture, also known as the bearded vulture, was a year round resident.

At the time, I never thought I would be looking at a free flying lammergeier bit a few years layer, one our first stop on a North Spain tour, we stood before the amazing rock formations of Mallos de Riglos, looking at the Eurasian griffon vulture soaring above.

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The peaks of the Mallos de Riglos.

About 90 percent of the griffons in Europe are to be found in Spain and the bird we where watching above us were probably born on the cliffs above.

IMG_1326A griffon vulture flying by the Mallos de Riglos.

Griffon were impressive, large vultures with their feathered “fingers” reading out into the clear blue sky. I turned my attention to another griffon but something didn’t say “griffon” to me. This bird had a tawny breast, long, pointed wings, and a long diamond shaped tail. The field marks were in alignment, this was not a griffon that I was looking at but the much sought after lammergeier! I got the rest of the group on the bird and our guide confirmed it’s existence.

This was not just a lifer for me but an iconic bird. A bird seen in many BBC nature documentaries, a bird that  would make Sir David Attenborough burble with excitement. I can just hear him now, “Indeed, the lammergeier, a bird made for the air. A grand vulture of the high rocks of Europe!”

 

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The Geese That Guard the Cathedral

Well I had failed to gain entrance to the Picasso Museum, even on “free day” (the first Sunday of each month). I had arrived half an hour before opening time and the thin line of people queued up in front made me hopeful that I would be soon looking at Picasso’s early works from his blue period.

When I entered to get a ticket, they informed me that the next available time to gain entrance was 3:45 in the afternoon. It was now just after nine and I had to transfer to my airport hotel to start the birding part of my trip.

And here is the problem with Barcelona: 30 million tourist visitors a year makes getting into the major sites a hassle, even in early April. I had not pre-booked a ticket (who knew you could book a ticket on “free day”). So I left the museum and contemplated my next move over a cafe con leche and a choclate croissant at a local cafe.

I figured I would head over to the Barcelona Cathedral, which Rick Steves notes, “doesn’t rank among Europe’s finest (and frankly, bare cracks the Top 20)”. This was the cathedral where Antoni Gaudí’s funeral was held in 1926 but he was buried in the crypt of his La Sanganda Famila.

It was a short walk through the ancient and very maze-like streets of the El Born neighborhood to the cathedral. And with my luck today, the cathedral was closed to tourists. Well it was Sunday morning after all. And all I wanted to do was see some geese!

So again, feeling defeated, I sat down and sketched a Roman arch near the cathedral which had a calming effect on my not-so-successful morning.

I decided to at least walk around the cathedral where I was surprised to find free access to the cloister. I’m sure the interior was awe inspiring but I really just wanted to sketch some geese and then watch some Catalonian dancing.

The thirteen white geese of the cloister have been at the cathedral for about 500 years, well not the same thirteen geese anyway. They have become symbols of the Cathedral and are considered guardians on the structure, a bit like the ravens at the London Tower.

After sketching the geese and exploring the cloister, I headed to the front of the cathedral to witness one of the displays of Catloniaism in Barcelona. And it starts promptly at 11 AM every Sunday morning.

As the hour of eleven neared, a band assembled on the steps to the cathedral bearing instrumentals that would not look out of place in an illuminated medieval manuscript on music. This was the band to start off the Sardana, the traditional dance of Catalonia.

This dance is a symbol of Catalonian unity and pride. Once the band starts up four dancers place their belongings in the center (an antipickpocket maneuver) join hands (boy-girl boy-girl) and proceed to cut a rug.

Well perhaps cutting a rug is a gross overstatement. They really tap there feet lightly and slowing move in a circle while more and more couples join the circle. It not unknown for travelers to join the dance but was happy to just to watch the dance before for I walked back to my Gràcia digs and caught a taxi to an airport hotel where a new birding adventure was to begin.

But I would not be looking at captive geese but wild and exciting birds!

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Casa Milà

After La Sagrada Família and Parc Güell, it was time to see another Gaudí masterpiece. This one an apartment building in the Eixample district. This is Casa Milà!

Casa Milà was derided and criticized when it was first completed for the Milà family in 1912. It was given the name La Pedrera, “the stone quarry” by early critics.

Casa Milà was certainly tops my list of Barcelona architecture to see and sketch. It is also one of the most visited attractions in the city, Gaudí ‘s La Sagrada Família is the number one most visited site in Catalunya. And considering the annal numbers of tourists that visit Barcelona is over 30 million! Because of this I prebooked my ticket for 9:30.

I walked from my attic flat in the Gràcia neighborhood and 25 minutes later I was at Casa Milà. I found a place to sit across the Passeig de Gràcia from this amazing building and started sketching. I can say that Casa Milà is truly a challenging subject to sketch because there are not many straight lines and it’s facade undulates back-and-forth almost like an ocean wave. Gaudí was really inspired by nature as my audio guide later informed me.

There were already lines of tourist with and without tickets where I got into the equally long line for tickets holders.

Once inside I stared up from the canyon of a courtyard into the clear blue Catalonian sky. This was akin the the experience of looking up into the ceiling a grand cathedral only this time Gaudí was proving a frame for nature. Gaudí was inspired by nature and standing and looking up toward the sky reminded me of a slot canyon in southern Utah or hiking up the Virgin River in the Narrows at Zion National Park. Here Gaudí was provided an escape from the overcrowded Passeig de Gràcia which seemed a world away here in the courtyard.

An elevator took me to the rooftop where the famous”chimneys” awaited. As well as the many other tourists photographing the chimneys and the cityscape. I wondered what it would been like if all of those people had sketchbooks instead of smart phones. It was hard not to walk around the roof without getting in the way of someone’s photograph and I found it a little challenging to sketch because of people standing in front of your own viewpoint. It was not really a calm crowd that I think this roof engenders. I could just imagine that the only sound would be the traffic below and the movement of pencil on paper above, now that’s my idea of peaceful!

These are called the guardians and some have suggested that they may have influenced George Lucas on some of the designs in Star Wars. Stormtroopers do bear a resemblance.

I got two chimney sketches off and then headed down into the attic where Gaudí’s other work was highlighted. Then down another story to a floor that contained four apartments, one of which was on display. And then further down a few flights of stairs spits you out into the gift shop and then into the thriving throng of Passeig de Gràcia.

With a backwards glance at Gaudi’s amazing work I headed down Passeig de Gràcia to explore more of the Catalan Capital.

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Parc Güell

After spending the morning at La Sagrada Familia, I headed up to the hills to see another one of Gaudi’s work. This time it was the village Parc Güell.

Parc Güell was a nice counterpoint to the massiveness of Gaudi’s unfinished church. Parc Güell seems to be built into its wooded surroundings. And my bird list was growing: singing blackbird, alpine swift flying above, barn swallow, hoopoe, a hovering kestrel, and the nonnative monk parakeets where nest building in the palms.

But I was not here to just to watch the avian life. I was also here to look for a dragon!

Judging by the hordes of tourists taking selfies and group photos with the dragon, I was not the only one looking! The dragon, knows as el drac is one of the most popular sights at Parc Güell. It was a challenge to sketch the mosaic figure because of the constant stream of tourists posing with it. So I had to take a sit and wait approach to capturing this dragon in my sketchbook and hoping the the dark looming clouds would not unleash their torrent.

El drac poses with yet another tourist. Must be hard for a dragon to hold a smile all day long.

It started to rain, so I took refuse in the Hypostyle Room and it’s forests of columns reminiscent of the massive forest of columns in the nave of La Sagrada Famila. This covered spaced was conceived to be used as a market for the estate. It was a perfect place to to take shelter from the passing showers and do a sketch.

You can barely make out Parc Güell through the thick forest of tourists.

I sketched the the two-toned tower of the Porter’s Lodge while the tourist groups also took shelter from the downpour and they got some selfie stick use to the extreme.

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La Sagada Familia: Sans Pens, Pencils, and Paints

On Friday morning I showed up on the Nativity Facade of the church to take a tour of the inside of the most visited site in all of Barcelona. By selecting an early tour, I was hoping to avoid the crowds. No such luck. It seems to be tourist season all year round, even in the “shoulder” season of April.

Because I had pre-booked my ticket, the line was short and I had to go through a security check point that was up to the standards of any worthy international airport. All of my belongings went through the x-ray machine, the guard at the other end was only interested in my sketching bag. He took my sling pack and opened it and examined my pencil bag. I showed him my collection of pens and pencils. He was really interested in the small leather case that carried three sizes of tubes. These puzzled the security agent and I had to pull the tubes apart to show him that they were merely travel watercolor brushes. This didn’t seem to impress him. So I told him that they were Escoda brushes that were made in Barcelona. This seemed to impress him even less! To think that you couldn’t smuggle three Catalonian brushes into Barcelona’s most famous church!

He took away my pens, pencils, brushes, and paints meaning that I had no way to sketch within the glorious church. I am not a religion person but this seems like sacrilege!

So I had to settle for taking photos (iPhones and not sketchbooks seems to be the common currency here in this unfinished masterpiece). So all of my sketches of the statues on the Passion Facade where done from photos. Blasphemy!

2019-04-05 09.10.21Well maybe having my sketching kit wasn’t such a bad thing. How on earth could I capture this in a sketch?!

Later in the day I did a few sketches of what I have seen and photographed. I would have preferred to have used pencils, pens, and paper to sketch in real time but the security guard left this sketching bird flightless.

While I would have preferred to sketch “from life” even taking the time to sketch from a photograph helps me the “see” and understand Gaudi’s masterpiece.

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La Sagrada Familia

As planned, I set my bags in my attic room, took my sketching kit and walked the five blocks to Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece.

I had caught my first brief glimpse of La Sagrada Famila through the far window as our Boeing jet was on final approach to Barcelona International Airport and even then, the towering phenomenon stood out from the rest of the cityscape. This was and is an architectural work of genus and wild imagination. A work that underscores the art as well as the structure.

I was again teased with a fleeting peek as my taxi raced through Travessera de Gracia on my way to my Barcelona digs. From my seventh story balcony I could see the unfinished towers and the three cranes looming above. They were in constant motion, underscoring that the work was still in process, 130 years after it’s beginnings.

A sketch of the view form my seventh story attic apartment of the cranes towering over the unfinished La Sagrada Famila.

I headed southwest down Carrer de Sardenya and the massive Passion Facade rose above all else. I had to head further away from the facade, just to take it all in. This was a truly surreal scene, aided by the fact that I had had very little sleep over the previous 48 hours.

A sketch of the towers of the Passion Facade and the every present construction cranes.

I started with a short thumbnail sketch just, in the words of Andy Goldsworthy, trying to “shake hands with the place”. And right now we were not really connecting. So I decided to change perspectives as I walked around the cathedral, past the Barcelona FC side chapel, perhaps the real religion of Catalonia, headed up by it’s Argentinian deity, a short man from Mars by the name of Messi.

It was while placing myself in the Placa de Gaudi that I looked up at the Nativity Facade that I truly started to meet this masterpiece for the first time. I got a sketch in and as I put pen to paper I knew that I would not be able to capture every detail of this incredibly detailed facade and so I used a lot of sketching shorthand to try to render this work on paper.

It was interesting to learn that the Nativity Facade was the only part of the church that was finished in Gaudi’s lifetime before he was tragically run over and killed by a tram in 1926. At the time of his death the church was about 20 percent complete. It is hoped that the cathedral will be completed in 2026, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Looks like I shall return to this gem in seven years with pencil, pen and paper!