Painting My World

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      This is my oil painting of a Grasshopper Sparrow. I suspect it’s a male because it was singing. Males will often sing to attract mates and to protect their territories; and since adult males and females look alike at all times of the year, the fact that it was singing is the only indicator I have to identify it as a possible male.       Did you know this bird has a teeny-tiny sliver of yellow feathers on the shoulders of its wings? Reading that Grasshopper Sparrows used to be called Yellow-winged Sparrows led me to examine my photographs closer. And voila, yellow! See photo below.      Grasshopper Sparrows are in steep decline, having lost 78% of their population since monitoring began in 1966. In Minnesota alone, they’ve lost 97% of their population and their decline is second only to Western Meadowlarks. Their occurrence is now rare in the north and northeastern parts of the state.      ...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      An appropriately named bird, the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is considered a long-distance migrant if it's found in the upper reaches of the United States and southern Ontario. However, this bird can also reside year-round along the southern border of the U.S. I wasn’t expecting to find this bird in good numbers at Whitewater State Park in Minnesota, but after familiarizing myself with its song, I heard it on several occasions during my long weekend trip to the Driftless Area.       This particular breeding male (females and nonbreeding gnatcatchers don’t have black eyebrows) was busy feeding and singing, and interacting with other birds. I didn’t see a female around, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one nearby. It’s not often that I revisit a trail on a birding trip, but because the Meadow Trail was teeming with a lot of birds, I returned the following day. In this same area, I was also captivated by a pair of Eastern Phoe...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      Here I have painted a Ring-necked Duck in a less complex style than usual. The hard edge of the water meets a tan-colored background void of complicated brush strokes and detail. The bird is simplified, yet the attentiveness given to this painting was no less measured.       When I paint birds, I like to learn about them, too. On January 15, 2021, I photographed this handsome fellow in the icy waters of Agate Bay in Two Harbors, MN. Besides the overall coloring indicating it was a male, the tan and gray feathers on the side of its belly designated it as nonbreeding. At the time, I didn’t know that. My intuition told me that no birds breed in Minnesota during the wintertime, so its breeding capability, or lack thereof, never crossed my mind; but isn’t it great when a bird’s feathers have something to say besides determining its sex? I think so.       Diving for food in frigid Lake Superior, this duck ...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      This is a painting of a female, or immature male, Bay-breasted Warbler that came through my neck of the woods on August 13, 2025. It was hunting for insects fairly low in the branches of a spruce tree, about 15 feet up. It spent time in an adjacent cedar tree, too. These birds really like to eat spruce budworms, an insect that morphs into a small moth at maturity. Budworms can cause significant damage to balsam fir, white spruce, larch and hemlock forests. In turn, Bay-breasted Warbler populations can increase when there are severe budworm outbreaks.       Bay-breasted Warblers aren’t birds that I see often, and I’ve gotten lucky spotting them during fall migration, specifically around the second week of August at my home in Duluth, MN. They are a long-distance migrant that travels through the Caribbean to the northwestern reaches of South America in the fall. This year’s spring migration yielded my first-ever sighting ...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      Of all the birds in the world, the Western Meadowlark might rank near the top to qualify for a new name, for it is not a lark. It’s a member of the Icterinae subfamily, i.e. blackbirds.       This well-known grassland bird is the state bird of six states: Kansas, Montana, Oregon, Wyoming, North Dakota and Nebraska. In Minnesota, good opportunities to see this bird can be found in the tallgrass prairie biome in the western and southwestern parts of the state. Of all the biomes in Minnesota (tallgrass prairie, tallgrass aspen parkland, hardwood forests and pine forests), the prairie is my favorite.       Each year, I make a point to visit the prairie, usually somewhere I’ve never been before. This year’s visit included Buffalo River State Park (25 mi east of Fargo) and surrounding areas.      With less than 1% of Minnesota’s native prairie still in existence, prospects for the Western Me...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches            Last year, Red Crossbills visited my feeders containing black oil sunflower seeds between May 15 and May 28th. Those sightings remain the only time I've seen these perfectly-named birds.       Compared to most birds, there’s a lot more to learn about Red Crossbills. The following paragraph taken from allaboutbirds.org [accessed Feb. 10, 2025] summarizes this bird well.       "Traditionally considered a single species of multiple races, Loxia curvirostra may actually comprise more than half a dozen separate species—each of them showing a mix of traits so close to the others that they are inseparable in the field. Even taxonomists with specimens in the hand are often uncertain of what they have. Birds of different bill sizes and shapes apparently prefer different conifer species (the smallest types feeding on hemlocks, the largest on white pines), but the differences must be measur...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      This is a black and white (sort of) oil painting of an Eastern Phoebe. A trip to William O’Brien State Park last September brought windy and hot conditions for a six-mile birding walk. I spotted this bird along the Wedge Hill Savanna Trail perched on a branch over water, sallying for bugs.       I remember that day well. It was too windy for decent birding, and the temperatures were between 76-80˚ F. For me, that’s hot; and without the wind, I wouldn’t have walked as far as I had. Oftentimes, when I see a bird by itself, especially during migration, I often wonder about its circumstances. Eastern Phoebes leave Minnesota for warmer climes in the fall. How far would this one travel? Why was it alone? Was it a male or female? Was it cursing the wind like I was? Perhaps bugs were easier to catch on windy days. Maybe they have less control in the wind, making them easier prey. Or maybe they’re harder to find, hunkered down o...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches Copyright notification: The internet is a scary place. I have seen my artwork on unauthorized websites. This is called stealing, also known as copyright infringement. The only authorized websites allowed to display my artwork are www.beccamulenburg.com, www.beccamulenburg.blogspot.com, and galleries currently showing my work. Any other website, posting, sales of my work, or the like, is illegitimate and operating under copyright infringement which is against the law. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. Please be aware. Copyrights do not transfer with the sale of any of my artworks.

Oil in Panel - 16 x 20 inches.      This is my oil painting of female Bobolink. My photograph of her alongside Dart Road in Minnesota's Sax-Zim Bog in July of 2022 served as my reference.        Below is a poem about Bobolinks written by the distinguished poet William Cullen Bryant in March of 1855. It was published in Putnam's Magazine that same year. Punctuation, spelling and grammar were left unchanged. ROBERT OF LINCOLN. Merrily swinging on brier and weed,    Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead,    Robert of Lincoln is telling his name :       Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,       Spink, spank, spink ; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers.                   Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,    Wearing a bright black wedding-coat ; White are his shoulders and white hi...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches.      This is an oil painting of a female Brewer’s Blackbird, a species of bird quite unfamiliar to me. I am grateful for the research available, there’s always more to learn!       Depending on what part of the country you live in, these birds can be common and perhaps a nuisance as they await alongside humans for the opening of big box stores. In Seattle, for instance, once the doors open at a mega-superstore, they fly in to seek shelter from the elements or to score crumbs off the floor from its indoor café.       My experience with Brewer’s Blackbirds is very different. I’ve never seen them waiting for stores to open, let alone hanging out anywhere near them in my area. The invasive House Sparrow makes up for that. But on July 5th, I observed two female Brewer's Blackbirds tending to a nesting site in Sax-Zim Bog in northern Minnesota, a location far from urbanization.       The tw...