A monarch on the the milkweed...

Five years ago a volunteer milkweed plant sprung up in our backyard. Initially it was just one sprout...one strange little plant that kept getting taller, and taller, and taller. At first I didn't know what it was, until suddenly it dawned on me...milkweed! I have no idea how that downy little seed made it to our backyard, but it did, and it's done well. The single plant has grown into a stand of fourteen plants that live around my little pond beside the deck—definitely not an ideal place for the gangly plants, but that's okay. There are no other milkweed plants in the area, which makes our stand all the more special. We've had milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs, but until last week, the most famous milkweed-loving insect of them all, the monarch butterfly, had never visited. Our wait is over, because finally, there's a monarch on the milkweed...

Monarch on the Milkweed
(I used Sennelier oil pastels to create this painting inspired by the first monarch to visit our volunteer common milkweed patch. I hope she comes back and lays eggs so I can do a painting of a monarch caterpillar!)

Monarchs need our help...
Monarchs lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed, and the caterpillars that hatch out of the eggs never leave those plants. They only eat milkweed, so without a healthy supply of their host plant, monarchs will die out. Forever. Like...extinction forever. The problem is milkweed is being eradicated in the monarch's summer breeding grounds. In the midwest, where most of the monarchs are born, genetically engineered crops resistant to Roundup (an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate) are being planted. Previously, milkweed grew in the channels between the rows of crops, but now, GMOs allow for mass applications of the herbicide that leave the crops unaltered but the milkweed dead.

Plant milkweed...
If you have a patch of grass, turn it into a small urban or suburban prairie. I'm getting ready to do that in my backyard. This autumn I'm going to sow the seeds of native perennials, including milkweed, wildflowers, and grasses to form a small backyard prairie. I'll put a sign up that says Wildflower Garden...or Butterfly Garden...or Pollinator Garden...or maybe even Monarch Rescue Station!

The sun was sinking fast when this female Monarch butterfly decided to take nectar from one of the common milkweed flowers in our backyard. Even with a flash it was too dark for a good photo, and the monarch is blurred, but you get the picture!

Common milkweed smells wonderful with a sweet fragrance that hangs heavy in the air. 

I hope she comes back again.

The complete picture...
It's not just milkweed eradication that is harming the monarchs, though. According to "Conservation Status and Ecology of the Monarch Butterfly in the United States (March 2015)," by Sarina Jepsen, Dale Schweitzer, Bruce Young, Nicol Sears, Margaret Ormes, and Scott Hoffman Black, there are three main factors causing their rapid decline: loss of milkweed breeding habitat due to "Roundup Ready" crops and herbicide, logging at overwintering sites, and climate change and extreme weather. Other causes are disease, predators, parasites, and insecticides. If you want to learn more, click here to download their interesting 30-page pdf document where in addition to the monarch's conservation status, you can also learn about the butterfly's life cycle and diet, breeding grounds, migration routes, and overwintering locations.

For more information:

Click here for the Xerces Society press release, "Monarch Butterflies in North American Found to be Vulnerable to Extinction," March 10, 2015.

Click here for the Xerces Society press release, "Monarch Numbers up Slightly, but Butterfly Still at Risk of Extinction," January 27, 2015.

Click here and here for nice representations of the monarch's life cycle including photos of its five instars.

Native Plant Nursery in our area...and ecosourcing...
If you live in the Cincinnati area, and you're looking for a native plant nursery, try Keystone Flora. They grow their plants from seeds and cuttings generated from their own nursery. All the original sources were within 100 to 150 miles of Cincinnati. These plants originated from our region, so they are well suited to grow here without fertilizers or special water requirements. "Ecosourcing" is using native plants from local seed for local use. It's important because it preserves the genetic diversity and genotypes of local plants. Although plants may be the same species, there are often genetic differences between the same plants from different regions. To learn more about why native genotypes are important, click here for the article, "Problems Associated with the Introduction of Non-Native Genotypes on NRS Reserves."

Click here for a list of some of the native flowers Keystone Flora sells.

A tisket, a tasket, two little pollen baskets!

A week or so ago I was walking along the Little Miami River when I looked up and saw a honey bee buzzing around the blossoms on a Buckeye tree. She was high over my head, but I could still see two little red balls on her hind legs. "What are those?" went through my mind. I've seen yellow "clumps" on a honey bee's hind legs before, which I assumed were grains of pollen the bee had picked up while pollinating flowers, but I had never seen red clumps, much less red balls. A quick Internet search when I got home solved the mystery--"pollen baskets." Not all bees have pollen baskets, and not all pollen baskets function the same, but it seems the color of the pollen in the baskets is determined by the pollen source. Our little bee was pollinating Buckeye trees when I saw her, but maybe the red pollen came from a flower she had just visited. Either way, the thought of the busy bee inspired a quick painting...

Painting 220. Busy Bee with Red Pollen Baskets (oil pastel)
This is just a generic representation of a bee...it came out of my head, so it doesn't match any species in a field guide!

Pencil sketches from my sketchbook of honey bees with full pollen baskets...
When I got home that evening, I created an entry in my sketchbook. Again, these are just generic drawings of bees as I see them in my imagination. I don't know the species. I just thought the pollen baskets were cool, and wanted to record what I saw.

More about pollen baskets...
A pollen basket (or "corbicula") is a slightly concave, smooth surface on the hind legs of bumble bees, honey bees, orchid bees, and stingless bees. The "basket" is surrounded by guard hairs that hold in pollen the bee has dampened with nectar or honey and compressed into a "pollen pellet." When the bee mixes the pollen with nectar, the color of the pollen changes, but it is the source of the pollen that really determines the color of the pollen pellets in the pollen basket. Bee keepers can identify the pollen source just by looking at the pellets deposited at the hive. Bees that don't have pollen baskets have other structures for transporting pollen. Some use "scopa," a brush of hairs often on the hind legs and some carry the pollen in their crop. (Soure: Encyclopedia of Entomology 2008, pgs 419-434, here; Wikipedia, here, and for examples of pollen sources and their color, click here.)

...the red balls on this honey bee's hind legs (tibia) are called pollen baskets (corbicula). Pollen is a bee's main source of protein, fat, minerals, and some starches, so it's important the bee has a way to transport the food back to the hive. (Click here for a detailed article on bees that explains more about their dietary needs.)

...this little bee has been very busy! Her pollen baskets look almost full. It takes a worker bee from three to eighteen minutes to fill up the pollen baskets and return to the hive. That's quite a difference. I guess it depends on the abundance of pollen at the source...or whether the busy little bee is simply a slacker! (Source: Wikipedia. To learn more about bee research, check out Karl von Frisch, here.)

A buckeye tree with newly emerged leaves and blossoms just beginning to open was a favorite of this honey bee. Through the camera lens I could just make out the red balls on her legs. I almost didn't photograph the bee because she was so far away, but I wanted to find out what those red balls were! I'm glad I did...

...a sketchbook scribble I almost didn't include, but it's fun...and I need the paintings for the challenge! :-)
Painting 221. Busy Little Bee, Take That Pollen on Home! 
(watercolor and pencil--scribble idea for a future painting)

Common Goldeneyes in January...

I've been remiss at posting paintings for the 100 Painting Challenge! These paintings go all the way back to January when I saw the gorgeous Long-eared Owl near Caesar Creek State Park (click here for that post). After we saw the owl, we headed up to the Caesar Creek Lake boat launch to look for a few winter ducks. Nothing was close, but through the scopes, a few beautiful black and white ducks with large white spots on their faces (cheek patches) and bright yellow eyes were easy to see...

Painting 219. Common Goldeneye Before the Storm (oil pastel)
A storm was moving in as we watched a few Common Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) on the lake. To top that, night was falling which all but squelched the iridescent greens that show in the feathers on their heads when in the sun. 

Painting 218. Common Goldeneye in the Ice and Rain (oil pastel)
We wanted to stay longer to watch these beautiful ducks, but along with night, ice pellets and slushy rain were starting to fall. To avoid diminished driving conditions, we hit the road. The Goldeneyes bobbed on the water as we packed up our spotting scopes, diving now and then, not at all worried about the deteriorating weather conditions...

Painting 217. Common Goldeneye at Caesar Creek (watercolor sketchbook page)
This is a page out of my sketchbook -- even though I wrote 2011 in the description...it was 2012 (I'm usually pretty slow on the uptake of the new year in January!). When I got home, I did this quick entry in my sketchbook to remember these beautiful ducks. I did the oil pastels over the next few days.

If you're an artist looking for a challenge, join up at the 100 Paintings in a Year Challenge hosted by Laure Ferlita.

Hiking the Little Miami River for LMI's first GBBC...

Early Sunday morning I headed over to the Little Miami River at the abandoned Peter's Cartridge Factory for a bird walk. Penny Jarret, who works for Little Miami, Inc. (LMI), contacted me last week to see if I wanted to help bird the powder factory stretch of the Little Miami River for Cornell's Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC--click here to learn more about the 4-day birding weekend). Penny found my blog through a Google search and after reading a few posts learned how much I love birding the Little Miami River. I didn't even know Little Miami, Inc. existed, so I was really happy she contacted me. Penny explained LMI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Little Miami River (click here for a link to their web site.) Since 1967, LMI has created over 50 nature preserves along the Little Miami River and its tributaries. Penny is trying to bring more awareness to Little Miami, Inc., and thought a GBBC event could be her first step...

Painting 215. Chickadee Singing Sweetly Along the Little Miami River

(Oil Pastel)

We saw 19 Carolina Chickadees during our walk--our most numerous bird, so I decided to commemorate the day with a chickadee painting. Although it wasn't snowing, it was cold!

For the walk, I contacted a few birdy friends, Paul (local herp expert) and Mike (Everybody Funny blog), and Penny brought a few friends too, Steve and Bill...

Paul, Bill, Penny, Mike, and Steve all stand on the banks of the Little Miami River for the first ever LMI GBBC outing! I really enjoyed myself and was so happy to meet more birding friends (and Little Miami River lovers)!

A little more about Little Miami, Inc...and a video!

LMI has been actively protecting the Little Miami Wild and Scenic River since 1967! About 30% of the river and the riverfront forests have been permanently protected through ownership or conservation easements. Click here for a video LMI created called "Greenway! A River Discovery Complete" showcasing the river--beautiful aerial video of the river's path, interesting narration, and closeups of the river and surrounding river valley. LMI has all sorts of volunteer opportunities, so if you're interesting in helping, send them an email. You can find contact information on their web site.

Winter cardinals...

Against dark grey skies and bright white snow, the red of a winter cardinal is vibrant and impossible to ignore. With our first winter days finally showing up, all I had to do was look out my window to see that incredible color. I painted three cardinals in similar poses in three styles...

Painting 205. Cardinal in Snow

(watercolor; background snow created by scraping white oil pastel over a grey watercolor background)

This painting is a study in contrasts—the saturated red watercolor of the Northern Cardinal, which is very soft and blended, contrasts with the rough strokes of the white oil pastel. The contrast creates a very small black/grey halo around the bird to make the scene feel stylized and a touch painterly. It also emphasizes the red of the cardinal.

Painting 206. Cardinal When the Snow First Flies

(watercolor; snowflakes created by splattering white acrylic paint over finished painting)

...as evening falls, most birds head to their nighttime roosts fairly early, but the cardinals linger at our feeders and in our trees until it is almost dark. The other evening, a male Northern Cardinal sat in a tree outside my window while the snow started to fly. Our first heavy snowfall is always exciting, and I look forward to seeing glimpses of red through the heavy and quickly falling snowflakes of evening.

Painting 207. Winter Cardinal as Night Falls

(oil pastel)

...nothing can tone down the red of a male cardinal as night falls in winter!

Paintings of Sanderlings

Shortly after I did the post a few weeks ago on the Sanderling who "forgot to run," I remembered I had a drawing in my sketchbook of two Sanderlings I did back in March when we were in Captiva for spring break. Since Sanderlings are one of my favorite shore birds, I decided to do a series of practice paintings from that sketch. I concentrated on the two poses I had captured in the drawing...with lots of variations!

Painting 186. Sanderlings Foraging

Watercolor (12x16)

Painting 185. Captiva Sanderlings

Watercolor (9x12)

Pencil drawing of Sanderlings from my sketchbook (Captiva Island, March 2011). Florida birds are so amazing. Just sit and watch, and they will come right up to you!

Painting 184. Sanderling in Black and Blue

Watercolor (9x12)

Painting 183. Sanderling Pose 1...Again

Watercolor (9x12)

Painting 182. Sanderling Pose 2

Watercolor (7x10)

Painting 181. Sanderling in Orange (my favorite)

Oil Pastel (7x10)

Painting 180. Sanderling Pose 1

Watercolor (7x10)

...these are all quick studies and practices to help me get familiar with the bird. I only get to study them when I go on vacation to the ocean (which is never enough...). Eventually I'm going to work up to a complete painting where I concentrate on value and light. Until then, it's sweet and simple. My favorites are 181, 182, 184 and 186. I continue to plug away on the 100 Painting Challenge. I'm right on schedule. I should reach 100 by Dec 31. (This is my second year of a five-year 500 painting challenge.) If you want to see other Sanderling posts, click here.

A Pied-billed Grebe Couple at Ding Darling...

...when Matty and I saw these two Pied-billed Grebes swimming side by side, we thought it was a mama and a baby, but then we did a second take. It was only March 22, which seemed a little early for a baby to have matured to this size. When we looked through the binocs we were really stumped. The "baby" had the breeding plumage of an adult. I know males can be a little bigger than females, but this strange couple must have been made up of the biggest of big males and the smallest of small females...

...when we watched this couple from the bank, the size difference seemed much larger than what was captured in the photo, but even here, you can see how much bigger the male was. The female really did look like a juvenile. I don't get to see breeding pairs very often. I usually only see single birds when they are migrating through and floating solo, so maybe this is a normal size difference.

...we saw this Pied-billed Grebe couple at the J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Preserve earlier this year in March.

...pencil sketch of the mismatched Pied-billed Grebe couple (the size difference is slightly exaggerated in the sketch, but in real life, the male looked much larger as appears in this sketch--compared to how he appears in the photos).

Painting 179. Pied-billed Grebe Bright

(oil pastel)

Painting 178. Pied-billed Grebe Blue

(watercolor)

After I painted the painting, I took a spray bottle and sprayed the whole thing, letting the colors mix and drip down the page. It was painted quickly and sprayed before the paint had totally dried.

Painting 177. Pied-billed Grebe Light

(watercolor)

Chestnut-sided Warbler paintings...

Chestnut-sided Warblers are always a fun warbler to watch. Their bright yellow heads and rusty-chestnut sides always look so nice through the binocs! I continue to plug away on the 100 Painting Challenge (2nd year). I finished these paintings a few weeks ago and posted them to the challenge site and the Birding is Fun site, but forgot about old Red. So here they are...

Painting 176. Tough Chestnut-sided Warbler on the Lookout

(watercolor, charcoal, and an electronic PhotoShop Filter)

...pencil sketch of the Chestnut-sided Warbler

Painting 175. Chestnut-sided Warbler Migrating Through...

(watercolor, charcoal, salt for the mottled background, and an electronic PhotoShop Filter)

...pencil sketch for painting 175

Painting 174. Chestnut-sided Warbler in the Forest

(oil pastel over a quick watercolor)

(...this is my favorite!)

Painting 173. Chestnut-sided Warbler on Branch

(...a quick practice painting to plan painting 174. It is colored pencil over a two-minute watercolor.)

A Louisiana Waterthrush beside a rocky stream...

…Rick and I had just crossed over one of the many rocky streams that tumble down steep hillsides and into the Little Miami River when I caught sight of a bird bobbing up and down on a tree limb in the distance. I knew what it was without having to use my binocs—a Louisiana Waterthrush (Seiurus motacilla), but a quick look through the camera lens while snapping a photo confirmed its identify. What a find! We don’t get to see Louisiana Waterthrushes very often, so we were happy and surprised…

We caught sight of this Louisiana Waterthrush just after crossing the stream that leads to the heavily wooded, deep and dark lowland flats ("Middle Earth"). The sun had actually come out that day, and the whole woods had morphed into a steamy hot sauna. It felt good...

Painting 152. Louisiana Waterthrush along the Little Miami

(Oil Pastel, Sennelier Oil Pastel paper)

When we saw this bird, the heat of afternoon was building. It was the first day of sunshine in weeks, and when I got home and started to paint him, my mind was still filled with the heat of the sun. I guess that's why the painting quickly went to reds, oranges and yellows. I never know what will happen when I pick up an oil pastel and start to paint, because for some reason the results are representational and emotion-driven. Using the creamy colors is fun, and no sketching is required. I just start putting down color and let the bird emerge. The finished piece is always impressionistic with a grungy feel. Detail and accuracy are abandoned for color.

Painting 153. Louisiana Waterthrush in the Deep Woods

(Watercolor and scribbled color pencil)

I painted this guy several days later. By then the rains and grey cloud cover had returned (so no reds, yellows and oranges!). Seems my watercolor paintings are always a little more realistic and detailed, but this one is still very loose. It was fun to scribble over the top of the painting with colored pencil. I just recently started picking the colored pencils up again. I haven't used them for so long.

...a pencil sketch of a Louisiana Waterthrush as a study for painting 153.

I wish I had had a video camera with me to capture the way the warbler was bobbing up and down. He really made me think of a Spotted Sandpiper bobbing and dancing to some unheard forest rhythm.

Same butterfly, different styles

Painting 145. Yellow Butterfly on Red Geranium II

(Watercolor heightened with colored pencil, 10x7 Arches Cold Pressed 140 lb paper)

Painting 144. Yellow Butterfly on Red Geranium

(Oil Pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel paper)

Yesterday we had a taste of summer's heat before a cold front moved in and blew it all away, but the seed was planted, and warm sunshine and sunshine-y butterflies were in my imagination waiting to get out. I'm also taking a watercolor journaling class with Laure Ferlita called An Imaginary Trip to the Garden, and part of our assignment was butterflies. After I finished the journaling assignment, I took one of the extra photos and got my oil pastels out...intense color and a fleeting impression was what I had in mind, and painting 144, Yellow Butterfly on Red Geranium was a the result. After that, I created a very loose and impressionistic watercolor painting, then heightened it with colored pencil, which became painting 145...

Trillium Triad

Three paintings of three species of our beautiful three-petaled, three-sepaled, and three-leaved spring trilliums.

Painting 143. Trillium flexipes

(Oil pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

Painting 142. Trillium sessile

(Oil pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

Painting 141. Trillium grandiflorum

(Oil pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

I found these plants a long the Little Miami River in Warren County this spring and painted them from photos you can find in these three earlier posts...Trillium flexipes, Trillium sessile, and Trillium grandiflorum.

More bird paintings...and a field of tulips for good measure!

I have been painting, but I've only been posting the paintings on the 100 Paintings Challenge site because I've been trying to get the little mustards and wildflowers from the Adams County field trip and the Florida birds from the Captiva trip posted (but, if you know me, I always have a bit of Short Attention Span Theater going on, so I thought I'd pop the paintings up tonight). The paintings in this batch are all impressionistic with the emphasis on color and feeling...

Painting 137. Avis Spei

(Oil Pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

"Avis Spei" is packed with hope, love, and the promise of summer. The painting is based loosely on the newly arrived Blue Gray Gnatcatchers in our area. I really didn't know what to name it, so I asked Matty if he had any ideas. He thought we should come up with a new "scientific" name based in Latin, because finding this bird in a field guide might be a bit iffy! With all the color and energy surging through it, he thought "Avis Spei" would do the trick -- Bird of Hope! :-)

Painting 136. Spring on the Little Miami with the Blue Gray Gnatcatchers

(Oil Pastel, 10x10 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

"Spring on the Little Miami" honors the Blue Gray Gnatcatchers that have just descended into our woods. When spring rains come, these little imps are never far behind. Last Saturday evening after the rainfall, Rick and I headed over to the Little Miami River to see if the Gnatcatchers had arrived. We weren't on the trail very long before we heard their constant chatter and spring song. I didn't bring my camera, so I had to create this little bird from memory. I painted her a little bluer than she really is...because I was so happy to see her, and I added in lots of summer green because I always think about them gleaning insects from the green leaves (sometimes the imagination is a little more fun--and dramatic--than the camera!) If this had been a male, I would have added a black "eyebrow" stripe.

Painting 135. A Captiva Blue in Green

(Oil Pastel, 9x12 Sennelier Oil Pastel Paper)

"A Captiva Blue in Green" is a Great Blue Heron from our recent trip to Captiva Island in Florida. I love all the Florida birds...and can't get enough of them! I also can't seem to get enough of the Sennelier Oil pastels. I've noticed that I seem to have a different style with each medium I use with impressionism winning out. However, I can feel a detailed and realistic watercolor brewing in my head...

Painting 134. The Rush of Spring

(Acrylic, 16x20 Stretched Canvas)

"The Rush of Spring" is a raucous representation of spring--a field of tulips blowing in the wind and bursting with color. The image is totally made up, based on an impression left in my brain from the early 70s when my family went to Holland, Michigan. I LOVED that trip...seeing the huge fields of tulips has always stayed with me. The big windmill was pretty cool too! :-) I don't know if my brother was as impressed as I was, though. Since he checks my blog every day, I'm sure he will let me know!