Goose and Goslings by Kimberly Eddy
Sometimes I wonder what someone from the 19th century (or earlier) would think of our modern day claims of ” too busy” or “not enough time”. I am guilty of it too. I never seem to have enough time, despite having so many time saving conveniences available to me today.
One cure for feeling overly busy is to just take the time to stop, smell the roses, look at the geese…and then draw them.
The other day, we were super busy with a few errands, but my daughter was lamenting that we hadn’t been to a certain park in a while, where wild roses grow, and where beautiful geese are everywhere. I realized that part of why I have no time is because I need to make the time for some things, like going to the park. We got out of the car, a light rain was just starting (not enough to get us soaked, but enough to be refreshing on a hot day). The geese were out and walking around.
“Why are the geese out even when it’s raining?” my daughter asked.
“Hmmm. Why do you think? What are they doing?” I answered with a question. I wanted to see if she could figure it out.
“They’re eating. Oh! I know! The worms come out when it’s raining like this!”
“Right! Exactly.”
We watched them for a while, enjoying all of it. Then we went in the car once the rain picked up, and sketched them for a little bit.
Time well spent!
Tags: birds
Posted in Featured, From My Sketchbook, Study in Spring | Comments (0)
The other day, my 11 year old daughter came to me, very excited. She said there was a bird’s nest right outside the window. My first thought was that this was not a good thing, because of our cats. Why would a bird build a nest on our porch near a window when we have cats that sit in the window and on the porch all the time? Then I looked where she pointed and discovered that the nest was actually sitting on top of a flower pot I have hanging on the wall. For this sketch I drew the flower pot sitting on the deck, because otherwise it looked like it was floating in the air, and looked a little odd! 
The nest was so high up, we couldn’t see into it, so I took a picture with a digital video camera, to see what was going on. Inside I could see one light blue speckled egg. Later, the momma bird came back.
After a little bit of investigation, we discovered our little friends are a family of House Sparrows. You can find out more about House Sparrows here.
Stay Tuned for updates as “our” egg hatches. We’re looking forward to it.
Bird Nest sketched with Conte Pencils
Tags: birds, nests
Posted in From My Sketchbook, Study in Spring | Comments (2)
A friend has a pond behind her house, and her children had some tadpoles in a large canning jar, to watch them turn into frogs. These tadpoles were already starting to get their legs.
Tadpoles with pen and ink, and colored pencil
To learn more about the life cycle of frogs and tadpoles with your children, here’s a neat website I found, called Frog Life Cycle
Tags: frogs, tadpoles
Posted in From My Sketchbook, Study in Spring | Comments (0)
