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A Pheasant Pirouetting

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Saturday, 3rd January 2009

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AFTER PECKING at fallen sunflower hearts on the ground, the chaffinch attempted to fly up onto the feeder, displaying it’s double white wing-bars and its white tail-sides.

Because of its dull colours I assumed that this was a female but Barbara thinks that it’s a male because of the red on its breast. She’s right; when I check in the book the female (and juvenile) always has a buffish grey-white breast. This is the male in his subdued winter plumage. The rusty red of his breast and cheeks becomes greyer - what I call ‘plummy’ -  at this time of year.

The female pheasant may not be as skittish as the smaller birds but she pirouettes around continually, pecking under the bird feeder, as I draw her.

She’s a gift to draw as she’s got so much character with those slightly mad eyes that look as if she’s applied a little too much mascara and with real expression in the busy helter-skelter way she moves around.

After feeding, she takes an elegant sip from the bird bath; I feel that Gerald Durrell might have said ‘like a country lady up in town, pausing for a gin and tonic after a hectic round of the January sales.’

*sigh* I guess I’ll never be able to write like Gerald Durrell.

Comic Cuts

I’ve been enjoying drawing (using my Parker Reflex fountain pen) roughs for a comic strip in my walks booklet and colouring them using the paint-bucket tool in Photoshop (note the joined-up outlines of all the shapes so the colour doesn’t ‘overflow’).

It’s a way to quickly generate a page and get over all that scary blank white space.

Male Chaffinch in winter plumage

Female Pheasant