Nant Yr Arian

Feeding time at Nant Yr Arian, drawing from a new view point. Dense fog means the kites take a long time to build up confidence and wait for better visibility, heard but not seen. An hour late, one swoops into view before more can be seen congregating in the background before drifting through the picture plain and descend on mass into the foreground. cb Vdb (qr)

Newquay Coast

Headed West over the snowy pass in a bid to escape our endless winter inland and to Craig yr Aderyn (bird rock), Ceredigion's main sea bird colony of mostly guillemot as well as razorbill, kittiwake, shag and cormorant. The cliffs won't be packed here until the birds start laying and feeding chicks in May to June, but the guillemots stake out the best ledges and display around now, so already there is a good sprinkling of birds about. Much of the colony is directly below the precipice and impossible to see, but on occasion in a lull of the swell and buffered upwards on the wind, I catch the familiar sound of the sea cliffs coming to life and a warm sense of Spring, tantalisingly close. 

5 choughs weave their own sharp lyric into the cliff-scape as they pass from time to time in typical aerobatic display. A Peregrine, silent marauder, at one point provides the loudest crescendo as it sends the kittiwake colony spilling off the cliff in a snowy white outburst of alarm; Kittiwake! Kittiwake! name calling over and over as they tumble onto the safe surface of the sea.

The painting is made from an outcrop below the path that gives good but distant views of a small group of displaying guillemots,tight groups head bobbing and jostling on prime ledges.  The geology of brittle shale like stone eroding in vast sheets has formed layer after layer of perfect high rise terraces for the birds. Guano stained ledges delineate the potentially vast extent of the colony once breeding is in full swing. This ends further up the headland where the perfectly horizontal ledges rear up in a swirling kink of strata, impossible to cling to, let alone lay an egg on.

(Bad in anything Northerly)

Common Snipe, Pwll Penarth

Snipe line the shore of snow capped islands. Static,  intersecting bills divide the space, angled against the mottled plumage of one another. Slender green tinged legs end in a splay of tendril toes, rooted to the cold mud. The pattern repeats along the shore line, and in reverse as reflections in motionless water; turgid, clotting, on the turn as the temperature fluctuates around zero. As I draw the seemingly static motif, the cunning, shape-shifting snipe come to life, switching and swapping at every drop of the eye to take up new statuesque postures. In detail, I appreciate the maze of striation, barring and swirling plumage that for once stand out against the clean white backdrop.    

Fieldfare, Caersws

Flock of c.200 winter thrush and many more starling, make forays from hedge to ground, on a wet day. 

Car Park Punks

Another Waxwing explosion this year, after the berry crops of their usual wintering grounds on the continent have failed. I have anticipated their arrival since early November, tracking reports of their mass invasion moving steadily South from Orkney, Aberdeen and then closer to home the other week with 250+ in North Wales. Like two years ago when they last showed in Mid Wales, I first found our Waxwings in the local college car park gorging on fluorescent orange  berries of an ornamental Rowan tree at the end of the last row of parking bays. They are pretty birds, rare, tolerant of people with a pleasing almost purring call and congregate in big flocks. Not surprisingly the college waxwings draw a crowd of birders, photographers and the local ringing group. In turn we attract enough attention from the students, lined up peering down the railway track fence laden with Hawthorn, are we trainspotting? I could correct them but realise it's much of a muchness. 

So this particular car park is mildly hostile for an anorak  where the main occupation is driving around between speed bumps at the top of the rev limiter - colourful driving the grounds man who has taken a real shine to the waxwings calls it, when seriously concerned for our safety. But the real attitude in the car park is the pack of 100 so punk crested waxwings, necking berry after berry until the Sorbus are stripped and then moving onto the Hawthorn, this is what keeps me coming back and sucking up the mild abuse that comes from standing on my own in sight of an adolescent smoker's corner, at an easel with bins glued to my eyes, a brush in one hand and a palette in the other; "Oi mate... Oi LENSY!... what you looking at?!....(me) birds?....Ideal!...what sort... Brunettes! ....(me) nice one, do you want to have a look?" 

To be fair a nice lady offered me a cup of tea the other day, that was when it was really cold. During these cold snaps the birds become even bolder, dangling and gulping at the low hanging berries just a few feet from our faces. On wet weekends when there are no cars about they come onto the ground to drink and flutter in the puddles, it can become a real frenzy with a constant conveyor of trilling birds commuting between bush and water. After all this time the one thing that still spooks them are the trains, every two hours one passes and like a touch paper ignites every bush along the back of the car park in succession sending flocks of frantic, screeching waxwing reeling into the sky. My most productive time seems to be late afternoon, when the Waxwings gather behind a classroom, filling every available limb and tangle of hawthorn bush, feeding, preening and just hanging out before the trills suddenly begin to crescendo and with a sudden eruption of flight they head purposefully West towards Mochdre to roost. Each time I realise with accute anxiety, that they may not come back as the berries thin out each day and it could be another 2, 5 even 10 years before conditions conspire for their winter return here once more. But there are so many possibilities, compositions, behaviours to paint and each drawing leads to ways I could improve on the next, this is the addiction, the anxiety, the frustration I have right now of relying on the unpredictable. 

(Cb,Ru,QR, brush, dark tones, dry, background sky- define light tones, drop in background forms,  define detail) Also working crayon/wc on Bock for large group comps, sillouette single brush tone for pre roost flocks and ideas for ground feed/drink with car park furniture on the weekend or from car in wet. 

Caersws Whooper Swan

Whoopers are back! 16 grazing a field I haven't seen them in before. Has great landscape possibilities especially in dusk light, as this sketch reminds me, from access track.

Pen y Gaer - Iron Age Fort

16 - 21 October

Exploring the Iron Age fort. Considering its position at the head of two valleys and the visual juxtaposition between the remains and surrounding landscape forms. Further interest in relationship of the prehistoric landscape and present landscape use - farmland, damning of Clywedog valley and remains of mining and macro landscape. Iron age and bronze age features (cairns, standing stones) are of interest for their position in the landscape, which was highly relevant and can perhaps be revealed or explored through visual art today.