Vesper Sparrows are sweet birds. They are often described as plain, which I guess they are when you first look at the gray-brown feathers that help them disappear into the scrubby fields they like to haunt, but when they fly from perch to perch in the grass, a flash of white on the outer edges of their tail feathers is bright, and suddenly they are not plain at all. I love these little junco-like birds and enjoy watching them as they flit through the grasses, staying low and out of camera range usually. When I saw this male at Armleder Park, he was singing from one of the higher perches in the field, but he still was able to avoid the camera lens by perching behind grasses and sticks, so instead of photographing him, I did a few field sketches, concentrating on gesture rather than feather detail, etc...
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Painting 224. Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) in the Morning...
(This painting started as a pencil sketch. I added watercolor and a touch of colored pencil later.) |
Vesper Sparrows love to take dust baths. I've read many accounts of that and was hoping to see one or two fluffing up in the dust and flapping around, but no luck. They are so well adapted to dry dusty fields that they don't use water for bathing or drinking! It's thought they get all the water they need from insects and seeds and possibly also morning dew on the grass.
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Painting 225. Vesper Sparrow at Armleder Park
(This painting started as a pencil sketch. I added watercolor and a touch of colored pencil later.) |
In bird literature, I've read over and over that Vesper Sparrows were named from the romantic view of naturalist John Burroughs that the bird sang more sweetly at sunset or dusk, which is the time for evening prayers or vespers, but I had never directly read anything about him naming the bird, so I wanted to check it out. I love naturalist writings from the 1800s and early 1900s that have romantic tendencies, so I was glad when I stumbled across the
John Burroughs website and a page called
"The Naming of the Vesper" (
click here for the link). A list of references shows the transition of the bird's original name of "grass finch" or "bay-winged bunting" to the name "vesper sparrow," and although John Burroughs promoted the name, he did not coin it. In Burroughs' 1871 book
"Wake-Robin," Burroughs gives credit to Wilson Flagg...
"They sing much after sundown, hence the aptness of the name vesper sparrow, which a recent writer, Wilson Flagg, has bestowed upon them." (Source: "Wake-Robin," by John Burroughs, page 212. Click here for the free online ebook version of the book.)
...after reading what was on page 212, I started skipping through the book to read more, and I loved his colorful descriptions. Now I want to get a hard copy of
"Wake-Robin" and a few of his other books. Here is a glimpse of Burroughs' introduction...
"Do such books as mine give a wrong impression of Nature, and lead readers to expect more from a walk or a camp in the woods than they usually get? I have a few times had occasion to think so. I am not always aware myself how much pleasure I have had in a walk till I try to share it with my reader. The heat of composition brings out the color and the flavor. We must not forget the illusions of all art. If my reader thinks he does not get from Nature what I get from her, let me remind him that he can hardly know what he has got till he defines it to himself as I do, and throws about it the witchery of words. Literature does not grow wild in the woods. Every artist does something more than copy Nature; more comes out in his account than goes into the original experience." (Source: "Wake-Robin," by John Burroughs, page xii. Click here for the free online ebook version of the book.)
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Painting 226. Vesper Sparrow Singing in the Morning
(...another painting started as a pencil sketch. I added watercolor and then gouache later.) |
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