Scroll forward to Thursday March 12. A day off coincided with excellent weather, and my new found zeal found me on site and looking for something to sketch. Of course field sketches are supposed to record that unexpected rarity, but that could mean one field sketch a year at Morton Bagot.... if I was lucky.
So I decided on a more OCD approach. Start with the first bird in the taxonomic order. This meant Mute Swan. The first obstacle was to establish whether any were present, and as it happened my luck was in.
The trials of the day have got me thinking. Should I sketch or should I snap?
The case against sketching:
The first problem is the amount of equipment needed. I have got into the habit of travelling light, just binoculars, camera, and notebook. But to sketch I decided I needed a firm base, and that means telescope, tripod, sketch book, pens, notebook, camera (just in case), and bins. Weighed down by all this stuff, my back was sure to suffer.
The next problem is frankly that sketching is hard. The ideal subject would be a bird which stands still for about half an hour in a field with nothing between me and it. Sadly, not many birds are so obliging, and I soon found that Mute Swans come with their own set of problems. True, they are unlikely to dive into a bush and never be seen again, but on the other hand they float. They float pointing left, then you look up and they are floating pointing away. Five minutes later your subject is back in its original position, but then it sticks its head under the water...and so on.
Sketching is subjective, while a photograph is objective. So perhaps a photograph is more convincing as evidence of the presence of a bird you are claiming to have identified correctly.
Anyway, I shall delay no longer. Here are the fruits of nearly an hour staring at a pair of drifting, feeding, Mute Swans.
Not too bad on the whole, but an hour spent getting an image I could have got in 10 seconds. Mute Swans are not hard to photograph. This brings me to another point against sketching. That hour was spent concentrating solely on those birds. Goodness knows what flew over my head while I was messing around with my pencils. In fact I did get a year tick in the middle of it all as a Chiffchaff decided to shout into my ear (slight exaggeration) to get itself noticed.
And another thing. Sketching is definitely a solitary business. On my typical Sunday strolls with Dave, pausing for an hour to look at a Mute Swan is not part of the plan. If I was to be restricted to Sundays I think I wouldn't bother, but my life is due to change. My work contract is due to end, and praise be, it looks like I am going to get another job working part time. A whole day extra to go birding, on my own, its a sign from God, go sketching young man (well all right, old man).
Which brings me to the case for the defence of field sketches.
Mike Langman makes the point that it makes you really look at birds. And he is right. Admittedly Mute Swans aren't a daunting identification challenge. If you can't identify one, there's no hope for you. Most of my looking involved trying to work out the odd head shape, how long is the bill, the various neck shapes, and the proportions of head/neck.body. I haven't been entirely successful either, but I think there is a composite Mute Swan in there. I also did notice something interesting, the shape of the black area between eye and bill. As it happened a second pair was present on the pool behind the hedge. In stark contrast to the pair I sketched, these birds were overtly territorial. One had flattened out a potential nest (the species is yet to breed at Morton Bagot) and came surging towards me in a testosterone fueled fury.
Just look at that raised wing display, and in particular look at the orangeness of the bill and the black triangle between eye and bill. Blacker and more triangular than on the birds feeding peacefully on the main pool. What does this mean? Are the territorial pair just in a more advanced state of breeding plumage or are they older than the more peaceful pair? I briefly noticed orange rings on the legs of at least one bird in each pair, so it should be possible to find out the answer. All this from staring at Mute Swans.
On a purely personal level I have to admit to a deeper sense of satisfaction from completing a set of sketches than from pointing the camera at a bird and getting a moderately sharp photo.
So I'm turning over a new leaf. The sketches are coming back, just not on a Sunday!
PS other birds seen today included 48 Teal, two Green Sandpipers, about 30 Fieldfares, 20 Redwings, a Goldcrest, and about 20 Lapwings.
No comments:
Post a Comment