All of us working with the Klamath Bird Observatory bird banding team were able to attend the recent Western Bird Banding Association (WBBA) meeting for free, so I made this painting of a Wilson's Warbler perched on a sprig of Douglas fir to be sold at the silent auction (the proceeds of which help fund scholarships for meeting attendance.) The meeting was a blast - easily the most friendly conference I've ever been to, but attended by some real heavy hitters in the bird banding world! The colors of this scan got a little wonky, but this is an after-hatch year male Pacific Wilson's Warbler, a subspecies that has a little more of an orange tint on the forehead and chest than other birds.

I made this drawing of an Eastern Whip-poor-will and her chicks as a birthday present for my best friend Frans Boukas, who is working on an incredible comic series about a battle gnome called Gnomad. I had this image in my mind of Gnomad receiving some advice (or maybe laughter) from a mama Whip in the forest and had a lot of fun working on this project. You can check out Frans's amazingly detailed work here: http://www.rottenoak.com/ and rottenoak.tumblr.com

Boreal Owl and Peony

This piece was created as a thank-you gift for Dr. David Russell, who founded and runs the Avian Research and Education Institute at Hueston Woods State Park in Oxford, Ohio. Dr. Russell and his wife, Dr. Jill Russell, were kind enough to allow me to attend bird banding classes, observe operations at the banding station, and accompany them on their Ornithology class field trip to Magee Marsh. Over the summers, the Russells study Boreal Owls (Aegolius funereus) and farm peonies in Alaska. What a life!

Munchique Wood-wren sketch. I have a book of BirdLife International's most endangered bird species (the 2009 or 2010 edition, I think) and couldn't help paint this particular one. A few years later it looks like there's lot more photos and research on this species, but they are still considered critically endangered.

Trying to slowly get back in the habit of posting regularly! This is an older watercolor of a White-eyed Vireo from 2013.