Arctic Skua - the Loveliest Bird

Okay, so it’s the first day of Stromness Shopping Week and it was bound to be a beautiful day. By the evening I was ready for a breath of fresh air after being stuck in the gallery all day for the sale of one sodding card! £2.50 is not going to allow retirement any time soon. . . .

The weather was still very pleasant after dinner so I loaded the scope and tackle into the car and made for Yesnaby. Lugging the Nikon and the Velbon 7000 video tripod a mile and a half with satchel of art gear and sketchbook was well worth it as I a dark phase skua rises over the ridge to investigate me. I meander across to my favourite rock (a la Shirley Valentine), place my binoculars on the ground and, as I swing the scope of my shoulders there’s a ‘crack!’ – the scope’s weight has snapped the holding screw off the tripod quick-release plate – oh super! I know it’s my own fault for being an idle sod and carrying the scope attached to the tripod, but the realisation only serves to darken my mood. The birds are too far away for binoculars – drawing through, at any rate, but I have a quick scan of the scene and locate a pale-headed skua. I’m pretty sure what it is but I have to get the scope hand-held onto the bird – a fully fledged arctic skua youngster! Now let’s no longer mince words about this bird – if arctic skuas were the commonest bird on the planet they would still grace any orni-porno site, as it is they are looking down the barrel of permanent oblivion from these isles, which makes this sight every so slightly welcome.

But the scope’s knackered. I try to bind the thing to the tripod with the strap which is fairly successful until; I realise that in doing so I’ve also fastened the barrel focus tightly too – smashing! Off it comes and I realise there’s no way to make it sit. But, by balancing the scope on the tripod head and moving it ever so carefully I can peer through the eyepiece and at my baby – gorgeous! I make a quick drawing in tone and just as I have got the hang of using this delicately balanced rig, a fecking dog-walker comes over the brow and straight through the territory. Fecking w@nker – but my birds are immediately at him and his mutt and I barely contain a laugh as this burly lad screams ‘fuck-off, fuck-off’ whilst waving his arms about at the dive-bombing skuas. Tit!

But it does give me the chance to see the chick can fly; albeit not with the sleek and graceful lines and curves s/he will (hopefully) achieve in the fullness of time. However it drops down behind the ridge and out of view. I’m just about to pack in when I notice one of the parents nearby. Again using the balancing act I train the scope and make a couple of drawings when from nowhere, the fog comes rolling over the hill obscuring just about everything. Ah - the joys of a warm day at the coast.

Then the chick is there again. And it’s doing something I’ve never seen – plucking at vegetation and eating it. Most curious and something I need to read up on. It’s hunched and shuffling gait recall its close relatives the gulls and it begs from its parent similarly; tapping on the bill in expectation. Then everything’s gone – the fog is total. I’m left with a trudge back to the car, dripping sketchbook and ruined tripod with barely a drawing in the book. But absolutely elated!

The sketches show a dark-phase arctic skua and then the same bird observed through the thickening fog, having relocated slightly. The studio piece is a composition using the fieldwork of the dark-phase/light-phase skua pair.

The following day I was determined to make amends for the debacle with the scope and, having replaced the quick-release plate, transported the scope and tripod separately. Entering the skua territory today was like being on a different planet; gone had all the gloom and mood of the previous evening (enchanting though that was), to be replaced by bright, warming sunlight and something I rarely have to contend with in Orkney (this year at least) – heat haze!

Fortunately my birds are growing accustomed to my hunched shuffling through their space and, as soon as I flop down on ‘the rock’ they seem to settle; the dark bird coming to rest not 30 metres from me. I intend to make a few investigative drawings, but my eye and pencil seem content to enjoy the one pose this bird has settled into and soon I have made a colour study describing the immediate scene.

Scanning the moor for alternative viewpoints I chance upon a youngster, then another; again one bird remains fairly motionless and allows involved study for 20 minutes or so. The light breeze occasionally rearranges the bird’s plumes and it flicks away the midges from its face.

A yowl of anger makes me turn and one of the neighbouring skuas takes off after a great black-back which has taken the wrong course. It sees the large gull off and helter-skelters back to its resting place among the sedges, calluna and cross-leaved heath. Then I see the cause of its worry; another fledgling – three in total in this small area. This is excellent news considering the skuas’ main provider, the arctic tern, has had such a terrible season and very few remain to be parasitized. I watch the adult and the youngster for the next half hour, all the while scribbling in my sketchbook.

The sketches are of the adults and youngsters:

The studio painting is derived directly from the first colour study I made:

From The Field to The Studio

I spent some time during June continuing the theme of light as a mood and not merely a way of illuminating a painting. The members of the local eider population are accessible and compliant models for drawing and painting and also photographing; they are powerful in structure yet soft in plumage and offer much for the artist to contemplate. The auks – guillemots, razorbills and puffins – have similar characteristics with the added complexity of highlighted darks and shadowed whites.

"The Ledge" is a painting involving interaction on the cliffs and deals with highlight and shadows falling on disparate hues and textures.

There is always a dichotomy regarding the depiction of puffins; the well-known clown of the cliffs and the fierce little predator living life on the edge. Of course the puffin knows nothing of these labels and characterisations – it is what it is and it does what it does. This puffin painting is an attempt to de-anthropomorphise this species and to see them in terms of design and composition.

Living in Orkney, I’m never far from awesome and inspirational land and seascapes. In certain weather conditions however, the urge to work plein air is curtailed by the knowledge that a force 8 could see paper, paints and artist taking to the air and, ultimately, to the sea. The camera was invented for such conditions . . .

Interpretation of one’s photographs is as much a challenge of mood-setting as that of value and hue application.

Once again bird-survey work has been a major occupation this spring and has eaten into a lot of available sketching and painting time. It does, however, ensure that I get out into the field in all weathers and at the extremes of the day. This brings me into contact with various birds in different light and weather and each bring unique stimuli to the painter of the natural world.

This common sandpiper was calling in alarm as I entered his water-margin territory on the Loch of Swannay in the north-west Mainland during a daytime survey of the loch. His melodious calls echoed around the locale and were dueted by those from his mate who stood-off a short distance away on a low dyke. The mare’s tails are just emerging and create a low pre-historic forest through which I see him.

One evening I punctuated my surveys in Birsay and detoured to the Burgar Hill moorland nature reserve where a pair of red-throated divers had a nest. As I stopped the car I noticed a ringed-plover scuttling around and he was quickly joined by his mate. Like tiny clockwork toys, they ran, stopped, ran across the stony and bleak ground. The rain and overcast sky brought a certain harmony to the scene; muting and merging the colours.

nd then there are those moments of fortune. Already booked on the ferry for my only off-Mainland surveys, I get news of a red-necked phalarope on a tiny marsh. Once surveys were out of the way, I ventured towards Ness, the north tip of Shapinsay where a deeply scoured tractor track leads to a typha-fringed pond and almost immediately I spot the diminutive wader swimming across the water, picking at insects and other morsels on the meniscus. From time to time the skittish nature of the mainly juvenile redshanks forces them airborne and the phalarope joins them, more out of politeness than fear. It is the first bird back on the lochan and resumes his business long before the larger birds drop back out of the sky. This painting is a recollected scene during that afternoon; the male red-necked phalarope scooting his way across the water whilst a juvenile redshank ignores him completely.

Some Effects of Light

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been fascinated by trying to portray strong light and, as ever when the sun shines (and I’m allowed to sneak off on my own) I head off to the low cliffs around Skiba Geo; terns, fulmar and eider are plentiful. Visits to this part of West Mainland are usually timed to coincide with survey work I am doing this season, during which today I had 15 eider nests in a 50x50 metre quad, two of which were actually touching tails as they incubated!

I’m interested in how light affects the subjects, not only by the direction from which it illuminates them, but also by the local atmosphere through which it travels. For instance, the first painting shows a group of three eiders seen from fairly close quarters (less than 30 metres) which are almost flood-lit, from directly above and from the left; the atmosphere is clear. The second piece shows a similar arrangement of birds but, besides being lit from above/behind, there is the sense that the atmosphere has a certain gravitas, formed by the relatively dense moisture content in the air and the distance from which the birds are seen. The quality of light in this second piece is very different from that in the first; having a solidity and weight (and maybe hue?) to it lacking in the first.

In the two arctic tern paintings, I am trying to deal with the light, but also with the incredible subtlety of these birds’ plumage. The greys are extremely changeable due to the angle of light and shade and almost shimmer as the birds move; very beautiful and challenging to paint.

The last painting relies very much on the lessons from the previous pieces. I used field drawings and photographs in the making of this painting (as in all the above, too) and paid particular attention to the way the different textures and colours of the birds’ feathers reflected and/or absorbed light; how they integrated hues from their surrounds and expressed a variety of these and how the slabs of rock reacted to the strength of light.

BBC Wildlife Magazine Wildlife Artist of the Year

Being a wildlife artist is a fundamentally solitary occupation – birds are easily disturbed and working alone reduces the potential for spooking the subjects – so I enter a few competitions from time to time as a way of keeping in touch with the outside world, and to let others know what I’m up to.

Earlier in the month I heard that two of my paintings had been shortlisted for the “BBC Wildlife Magazine Wildlife Artist of the Year Award” and would I kindly take them down to Wiltshire for judging. This would have cost an absolute fortune, but fortunately my good friend Nick Derry also had two paintings shortlisted and his parents were taking those to the judging. They agreed to take mine, too. The only problem was, I didn’t actually have any of the paintings that were selected; I had sold them last year! So after begging them back from their rightful owners I sent them on to Nick’s parents who took them to the judging yesterday (Monday, 17th May).

Last night I found out I had won in my category of ‘World Birds’!!!!
Here are the two paintings which were selected;

The glorious May has also continued to thrill on the birding front. The dotterels which I was sketching last week were still around into the weekend and I felt the urge to make a colourful composition of them with some wheatears, using my marker pen and colour wash style. I quite like the spontaneity this approach brings to the painting, but I can see it wouldn’t be everyone’s cuppa.

Then again, I’m not doing it for everyone – I’m doing it for me!

Following the long-staying dotterel came another splendidly exotic bird – hoopoe. This Mediterranean beauty found a pile of topsoil on a farm in Finstown to be just the ticket for the past few days and I spent a couple of hours making these drawings as the bird sifted through topsoil in search of beetles and grubs and then as it took forty-winks.

Pintails to Dotterels; An Orkney Year Begins

The past few months have been a blur with illustration work and commissions taking up a ridiculous chunk of my life, but from time to time I’ve allowed myself the indulgence of sneaking off to do some field study. Ducks come in many shapes and sizes but they are always challenging (and occasionally rewarding) to work from. An unprecedented number of pintails congregated at the Lock of Brockan during the early part of the year and, although very distant and quite wary, I managed a few sheets of drawings from my concealed vantage point in a low ditch 100 metres across the water.

February also brought waxwings to Stromness; somewhat later than is usual for this Scandinavian visitor. The suggestion that their homelands were providing a glut of berries on which they feed, encouraging them to stay in the north for longer seemed logical and a small party of four adults and a juvenile finally arrived at a time when we could normally be expecting them to be making the return trip. For a few days they brightened up a grey and cold February – a couple even making it into my own garden; an exhilarating sight. This watercolour is of one of the adults in an ash tree.

Two long-eared owls also decided that they would behave extremely co-operatively and showed beautifully in a bare-limbed sycamore tree in St Margaret’s Hope, South Ronaldsay. I made a few sheets of drawings and paintings on a freezing afternoon which culminated in this watercolour of one of the birds. It is destined to appear elsewhere at a later date (to be continued) . . .

I also started working in a slightly different manner recently. To try and keep a stronger element of drawing in my colour work, I resorted to a black ink marker pen; a tool which makes lines so far removed from anything in nature that it renders the pursuit of ‘realism’ obsolete. This allows me to concentrate more on exploring the structure and character of the birds, their behaviour and interaction and the elements of pure design in the work. And, although all the birds in the pictures are based on direct observation and drawings from life, they take on a fresh and contrasting personality through this medium.

May – the most exciting month of the year! Long absent friends return to breed, a few special winter visitors linger on and every now and then there’s the odd VIP who decide to drop into the isles on their route further north.
Last year I finally managed to connect with very long-lost friends; dotterels and, checking the ‘Rare Bird Alert’ distribution map last week I noticed there was a healthy sprinkling of these diminutive and exotic waders throughout Britain. Calling all ‘Orkbirders’ to arms I felt there was a really good chance of getting this species again. Hmmm – except I forgot Sally and I were already destined to make a weekend trip south. While I was enjoying a luxurious whirlpool bath in the hotel room a text message beeps through on the mobile – ‘Dotterels in Tankerness – NOW!’

Oh Shagggitttt!!! – not-a-fecking-gain! I know how lucky I was last year in connecting with this, my second favourite species, and were it not for the highly organised Orkney Rare Bird Alerter Mr Paul Higson, I would never have seen the seven in Tankerness in May 2009, but here he is on my mobile giving me the best news at the worst time. Ah well, nothing I can do but enjoy the short break and try to ignore the weekend’s football results.

On my return to Orkney I immediately check on the status of dotterel. None around! Anyhow life must go on (apparently) so off to the gallery I trudged. Halfway through packing a couple of paintings, I get a phone-call from Eric Meek – Mr. RSPB; ‘Tim, I’m watching these dotterels now – they’re in Tankerness’. Oh baby, baby – I hastily flick the ‘Closed’ sign in the window, chuck the‘scope, bins, sketchbook and a St Christopher in the car and a license-risking drive across the county puts me smack in front of the perfect foursome – 2 males and 2 sparkling females. The drawings don’t do anything like justice – but they are a viable account of the afternoon.

Birds & Beasts In The Depth Of Winter

Almost Christmas; another milestone ready to disappear into oblivion through the rear-view mirror as we hurtle forward through time at excruciating speed. Where the hell has this year gone to???

In three months time we’ll be celebrating out first anniversary in the Gallery and, I suppose the fact that we’re quite happy to continue with the business must mean we’ve gotten something out of it – albeit not much financially – but it has been a great way to meet folk (locals and visitors alike), and to exchange birdy tales. The last month has been very quiet, but has at least given me a bit of breathing space within which to concentrate on fulfilling a few commissions gleaned during the warmer months.

The peregrine portrait is a diversion from my usual work; I don’t tend to make straightforward portraits much nowadays, but this piece presented many challenges. I made several false starts to the painting until I found myself in accord with the way the piece was heading. The blocked-in feel of the background was difficult for me to achieve, not technically, but I had to stop myself going back in there and layering more detail and texture on. I thought the result fairly successful.

When a very nice couple came into the shop they seemed more interested in discussing the distribution of species (rather than my preferred topic; the re-distribution of wealth – theirs to me!) and they left with a smile and a promise to return at the end of their holiday. Hmmm – everyone always says they’ll be back. They won’t!
But they did return a week later, buzzing with the experience of connecting with a nice flock of snow buntings over at Mull Head. I’d been kicking a lovely snow bunt along the path at Ness Point on my twice-daily walks with mad-dog Donnie for about a week too and showed them the sketches I’d made one morning. Good move. We discussed a commission, sizes and prices.

The ensuing watercolour is one of my favourite pieces of work from the past few months and it was enthusiastically received. The returning cheque was more than enthusiastically received by the paupers of Stromness (us).

An unfortunate incident presented me with yet another corpse to study from;

A teacher at Edie’s school had noticed a bird being flushed a short way by a passing car and, as she went to see where it ended up, re-flushed it and it flew directly into a neighbour’s window. The house-owners came out and identified it as a young curlew and I was telephoned to collect it, if I wanted it. Walking up the drive I could see the bird draped over a window ledge. I could also see it was a woodcock. Straight home and to work.

The second was a beautiful ‘alba’ barn owl – a rarity up here – that had been fund in the South Parish of South Ronaldsay. My good friend Paul Higson was good enough to collect the bird and I made a start on a study. I didn’t, however. Feel I was doing the bird justice so I curtailed my work and popped the body in the freezer for another day.

It’s always good practice for any artist to tackle subjects which take them out of their own personal comfort zone and commissions often do this. Up here, agriculture is a way of life and most families have a connection with the land and livestock. The sheep are north country Cheviots and were owned by the father of a friend who wanted to surprise his dad on Christmas.

The hares and lapwing painting is a similar scenario; a husband’s secret pressie for his wife (added pressure n the painter, knowing a marriage could be at stake!)

Other self-motivated pieces from recently are the brown trout painting and this observational piece of a local hooded crown on the beach

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

American Plovers, Vireo and a Sandhill Crane

Wow! Autumn is always eagerly anticipated by all birders; the promise of north European migrants being flipped slightly westwards by easterly winds and onto our isles, there to be savoured and enjoyed, is the stuff of dreams. But we rely on the right conditions; these have to be conducive for the birds setting off on their migratory routes south through Scandinavia, then for easterly winds to blow them squint towards us and finally for precipitation of some sort to force them to land once they are in proximity. All we have to do then is go out and find where they are! It’s a fine plan. Sometimes though, it doesn’t work out like that.

This autumn for instance, the prevailing weather systems have been continually and aggressively from the west and, although we have had a few classic drift migrants (barred warbler etc) flounder to our shores, most have managed to make their way south, unhindered.

But what Mother Nature takes with one hand, she appears to have more than compensated with the other. Following on the kite-tails of the last hurricane, the airflow has been almost incessantly from the west and with it have come visitors not seen in these parts for many-a-year. American Golden Plovers are frequent if unreliable tourists to Britain – we’ve got at least three, two adults and a juvenile, merrily swanking around out li’l ol isles and showing the local greeny-yellow guys just what the meaning of ‘smart’ is. Just this week our near-neighbours in Shetland have been playing host to dapper chappies such as buff-bellied pipit and the mega-rare Veery; two deciding Zetland was as good a place as any to spend a wee break. I found a Pectoral Sandpiper whilst taking mad-dog Donny out for his morning constitutional along the Stromness golf course and just yesterday local birdwatchers were thrilled to get the call from our own Rare Bird Alerter, Paul ‘Mega’ Higson that he had cunningly enticed a Red-eyed Vireo to reveal itself from a Tankerness Plantation by ‘pishing it out’. This is the first record for Orkney!



However the prize for the bird that really captured the imagination has to go to the Sandhill Crane. With just two records for Britain in 1981 and 1991 (Shetland and Fair Isle) and an archaic one from Cork in 1905 (shot), Orcadians were delighted to have this leggy stunner strut her stuff around the stubble fields of South Ronaldsay. Although it almost wasn’t to be.

Y’see, the bird happened to drop into a field in the middle of nowhere and the local farmer, not caring too much about which species of wildlife wanted to share his land, just let the bird alone and got on with is own work. For ten days! After nearly two weeks of nodding courteously at this strutting wonder, he elected to find out what it was. Several interconnecting phonecalls ensued resulting in Mega’ Higson chucking brother Mark in the back of his saloon and venturing to the South Parish, fully expecting a Common Crane at best, heron more likely. On his arrival, and after checking his state of awakedness, he identified the bird as a Sandhill Crane and subsequently fell in a ditch. He may still be there!

The bird has now earned its place in British Birding lore; hundreds of enthusiastic folk having made the not-inconsiderable journey north (some less-so south-bound from Zetland and a few from Denmark and further afield) and almost all having connected satisfactorily with our friend from the west.

Immediately prior to the first of the pioneering birding troops arriving, I had the good fortune to spend a couple of hours in the early morning of the 23rd of September, all alone, just enjoying the tranquil beauty of a splendid bird, lost but contentedly feeding in a stubble field on a farm in South Ronaldsay, Orkney, watched and ignored by a posse of great black-backed gulls and a couple of lapwings.

And this is a painting worked from the sketches which I have published as a limited edition print. I think it encapsulates the essence of that first encounter with a superb and enigmatic bird – one I’ll certainly never forget.