A penguin, a hummingbird, a nest, and two doves

My son loves penguins, and said I needed a penguin in this bird collection, so here it is. I gave him a different background than the zoo where the picture was made. 

I believe this nest was made by a house wren. It was build into some outdoor curtains. House wrens will start building just about anywhere. As time went by the nest sagged more and more. The eggs did hatch, but I am not sure if the birds lived. They were gone one day. The nest was just too open and exposed not to be noticed by predators. 

I have a birdhouse that lost its hanger, so I just set it on the deck next to our kitchen window. It did not take long for 2 house wrens to find it. Every once in a while they serenade us. When the window is open it is like they are singing inside. It was so funny to watch them start building! You would think a twig like this would not go through that small hole in the birdhouse, but they are persistent and get it in there after a few tries. So after seeing this I wanted to paint another wren.

These mourning dove babies sat in a nest under the roof overhang of my parents' shed. They just sat there the whole week I was there, watching everybody come and go. My dad said they are back this year and had another two babies. It does answer the question of why you never see baby pigeons. I guess they like to stay at mom and pops for a long time and being tended to.

The reference picture for this hummingbird was made by Petra Glorie. She makes beautiful bird pictures while attending bird banding sessions. Birds are caught, banded, and released. Besides painting the hummingbird, this was good practice in skin colors!

I'm now in the home stretch of these 50 bird paintings! Down into the single digits. Yeah, getting there! It's a good feeling to see them all together. They are looking good.

Swan, egret, Cooper hawk, and a goose

I find that I enjoy painting swans. I finished a large painting of a couple of swans which I will post later. This swan we saw while on a bike trip in the Netherlands. So beautiful!

An egret from Florida; this one was in a bird sanctuary.

Thanks to my co-worker who rescues birds, in this case this Cooper hawk. He wants to get out of there!

Mama goose is keeping a watchful eye out while the babies discover their world. Geese are everywhere these days.

Kestrel and titmouse

The American Kestrel is a small falcon, beautiful, and colorful. I like how this guy is just looking at you. 

 The titmouse is such a cute little bird. So funny that while I was painting this one a real titmouse sat in front of my studio window on a left over dry coneflower from last year.

Picture credit for both these goes again to Petra Glorie

Two more

The first time I saw a bald eagle I was driving on the freeway and he came flying over. Wow! I was so excited to see this bird! Picture credit for this one goes to Petra Glorie. 

When I had a birdfeeder out the blue jays quickly took over! They were a bit of bullies to the other birds. Beautiful birds though. Once again I found painting the markings on the back tricky.
Jan Peels made the picture I used for this one.

Babies

This duck had a nest in my parents backyard. Their yard is small and fenced in, but it has a lot of greenery for a duck to hide in. My parents saw the duck fly into their yard several times and after some searching found the nest. A couple of weeks later mama duck emerged with seven ducklings. I happened to be visiting at the time and it was so cute to see. My dad even got them some baby duck food, and the little ones swam in the water bowl he set out. A few days later mama duck got very restless and was looking for a way out of the yard. My mom helped guide them to the river through the streets of their village.

These birds were sitting in a nest under our canoe, which was hanging on the outside of the shed. I saw a bird flying under the canoe a few times and went to investigate. I found the nest with eggs, and so decided we would not use the canoe till the babies were grown up. So we did not canoe for about a month! These birds are fly catchers so they are doing good work of catching insects. The are quite the acrobatic too.

"Winter king"

This little wren has a much cooler name in Dutch: winterkoninkje (winter king). Big name for such a little bird, but then again, the song of this bird is so much bigger than its size. Thanks to Andre Jacobs for the picture!

I'm inching my way to the halfway point of 25! I have two more in progress, so I hope to be over the hump tomorrow. Each of these birds has been taking longer than expected. It's a challenge for sure, but in a good way.

Chicadee, cardinal, parrot, and a nest

No bird collection is complete without a little chickadee. This little one is from a picture my niece made at their birdfeeder. 

I gave Mrs. Cardinal her Mr. 

What could these two be talking about?

Meet Basil. Basil is my co-workers' parrot. He likes to sit on her head and pick on her until he gets a treat.

In this next one the bird flew away! I said I would do 50 birds, but I thought it would be fun to throw a nest in there too. This was actually an abandoned nest. I'm not sure who made it.