Painting My World

Oil on Panel - 16 x 12 inches      House Wrens are now referred to as Northern House Wrens after last year's split by the American Ornithological Society. As an owner of several reference books on birds, it’s amazing how quickly out-of-date they've become. With changes made every year, whether by splitting species, lumping them together, or changing their names, it can be hard to keep up.       Northern House Wrens can find all sorts of interesting places to nest. On my property, I have two bird houses specifically for them, but in some years, they’ve also nested in a cable sleeve above our ditch – a black nylon-like material that covers hardware on a wire.  Northern House Wren with a fecal sac exiting a utility wire sleeve above the ditch at my home. Photo 8/9/2020.   Each fall, my husband empties our wren birdhouses, but according to a study by Charles F. Thompson and Andrew J. Neill from the Department of Biological Sciences at Illinois St...

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches      I subscribe to a small number of birding magazines and keep a record of articles about bird species. The most recent one in my collection about this bird, the Blackpoll Warbler, is from Living Bird’s 2024 winter issue. In one single night, 954 birds died after flying into the McCormick Place building in Chicago during a massive migration event on the night of October 4, 2023. Blackpolls were among the dead.       Fall migration is now in full swing, and it is dangerous, no doubt. Blackpoll Warblers carry the distinction of traveling further than any other warbler during migration – a whopping 1,800 miles from the Atlantic Coast to Columbia’s northern coast. And when they get to South America, they are greeted with the rainy season and large numbers of caterpillars to feast upon.       Sadly, these birds are in steep decline, losing approximately 71-90% of their population in the last 50-60 years. I...