Rational Poetry

I’d been looking forward to the weekend, as I’d planned to spend most of it outdoors getting some watercolour studies done for an upcoming painting, as well as attend several lectures at the Quantum to Cosmos festival in Waterloo. Unfortunately I ended up coming down with a case of the flu, which kept me cooped up indoors for the entire weekend (although my inner science geek forced me to suck it up and get out for last night’s World’s Beyond Earth panel, with the help of some ibuprofen).  So here’s some of last weekend’s work instead.

On Sunday morning I hit the Arboretum, where I found numerous late fall migrants. I’ve always found Grackles to be such sleek and elegant birds, with their long, wedge-shaped tails and iridescent plumage (though most people seem to regard them as nothing more than a common nuisance).

I snuck out during a small family gathering at my parents’ in the afternoon to check out the old stomping grounds. I flushed a Northern Shrike while walking up the trail — I’m always glad to encounter shrikes, but not so glad to witness so sure a sign of the approaching winter. He stuck around long enough for a single sketch (featuring the back of his head).

An aging Quaking Aspen near the edge of the willow marsh (the only one remaining of four old aspen that used to exist around the property) has always been a magnet for migrant blackbirds, and I found a mid-sized flock of Red-wings and Rustys in its branches. Fall female Rustys sport my favourite blackbird plumage — dark masks and glossy burnt sienna feather fringes against a fierce yellow eye.

And lastly, a colour study of late fall milkweed from along the trailside — my favourite botanical subject.