Drawing birds with Jack Laws

Drawing birds with Jack Laws

By Ilana DeBare

John Muir “Jack” Laws, a Golden Gate Bird Alliance board member and author of several field guides, has a beautiful new book out this month, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds. We sat down recently to speak with Jack about drawing birds — and why it is an activity not simply for “gifted artists” but for anyone who wants to heighten their appreciation of birds and nature.

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Q: This has nothing to do with the book, but where did you get your name? As a naturalist, did you decide to take the name of John Muir? 

A:  That’s really what my mom and dad named me. The middle name Muir came from my great-grandmother on my dad’s side. And John, with the nickname Jack, came from my grandfather on my mom’s side.  But they were very aware of the way those two things came together. My mom was a Sierra Club lawyer and the two of them had spent a lot of time romancing in the Sierra Nevada.

The whole time I was growing up, I thought I must be related to John Muir. I grew up reading his stories (of) climbing trees in windstorms and sliding down glaciers and all these other adventures. I definitely felt a connection.

Q: Most people feel, “I can’t draw.” Not just “I can’t draw birds,” but “I can’t draw anything.” Is that true? 

A: It is an incredibly powerful, pervasive myth. But it’s entirely false. The truth of the matter is that drawing is a skill, like learning how to make a bed. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

As adults, we don’t want to let ourselves do anything we’re not already good at. So we don’t give it a try. We don’t want to let ourselves stand briefly in that vulnerable place where we’re not already an expert. And so we miss out on a lot of really great opportunities.

Canada Warbler - sketch by Jack Laws

Q: But there are also differences in the level of potential. Wouldn’t you see a difference if you put Van Gogh and me in front of sketchpads?

 A: You listen to Mozart’s early stuff, and it’s not good. Then you look at what he does down the line, and wow! He’s put in his time.

If you start drawing on a regular basis for one year, at the end of that year, your friends will be turning to you and saying, “Oh my gosh, you’re so lucky to have that gift.…

Waiting for the Golden-crowns

Waiting for the Golden-crowns

By Phila Rogers

Every year when I flip over the calendar from August to September, I pin up on the wall above my desk the list of dates when I first sighted the arriving Golden–crowned Sparrows.

No other species says “fall” in the same way. When I hear those sweet plaintive notes, I know all is right with the world.

This morning as I look up into the early September sky and see a scattering of clouds that might bring us the first shower of the season, I wonder if I should begin my daily vigil now.  Though the earliest arrival date over the last forty years is September 16, I’m eager to begin.

In the dark hours of early morning, I imagine these flocks of small wayfarers making their way south from where they nested in the far north. Where are they this night? Where along the coast will they stop to refresh themselves before taking up the journey again at sunset?

Around sunrise, I will walk slowly up the street listening, listening. The first sign is apt to be a general liveliness among the local birds with lots of vocalizing, as if these winter visitors from the tundra are reason enough for excitement.

Golden-crowned Sparrow / Photo by Bob Lewis, http://www.flickr.com/photos/boblewis/

Some years, I will discover several sparrows silently feeding in the Catalina cherry where the street opens out onto the steep hillsides of the University lands.  Other years, I will walk further out on the dirt path where I have a view down to the bays and oaks in the narrow canyon where the north fork of Strawberry Creek begins.

Sometimes, I will be stopped by a small single note of uncertain origin. Then an answer.  Maybe two notes this time in a minor key, which makes me shout “yes!”  Once I was so excited that I performed an ecstatic jig, hopefully unobserved.

Another year, I came back to my house empty-handed, only to find a young male Golden-crown feeding, unconcerned, at the seed tray.

Last year was truly worrisome.  After almost a month of the daily vigil, I finally heard my first Golden-crown.  The date was October 11!  I recall a few years back, when the Golden-crowns were late, the San Francisco Chronicle began publishing “Letters to the Editor” from other bird watchers asking:  “Where are they?”

What is it about these small brown birds that engages our imagination? …

Avian ambassadors in Berkeley

Avian ambassadors in Berkeley

By Frances Dupont

A Golden Gate Bird Alliance docent hikes a half mile to the northeast corner of Cesar Chavez Park, carrying binoculars, camera, brochures, data sheets and a spotting scope.  She sets up the scope next to the trail and aims it at a small speckled lump that blends in with the dry grass beside a ground-squirrel hole.  Then she greets a passerby and asks if he would like to see an owl. He peers through the scope and sees a pair of bright yellow eyes looking back at him, and says something like, “Oh my gosh.”  Taking his eye away from the scope, he looks out across the grass and asks, “Where is it?”

The Chavez Park Burrowing Owls are a delightful lesson in camouflage. This helps to explain how they manage to survive along a busy park trail.  The GGBA docents call attention to those owls that are within the area cordoned off by a protective art installation, so that the public may understand why the area is protected.  These yellow-eyed ambassadors help spread the word that even a busy public park is shared with a wide variety of birds and other creatures.

Viewing the owls at Cesar Chavez Park / Photo by Doug Donaldson

Each year several Burrowing Owls spend the winter at Cesar Chavez Park, at the end of University Avenue, next to the City of Berkeley Marina.  This former dump site was covered and then turned into a park in 1991.  Twenty-one years later, it is heavily used by walkers, dog-walkers, joggers, cyclists and, surprisingly, wildlife.  Up to ten burrowing owls reportedly wintered in the park once, and five owls were seen in the winter of 2011-2012.

Burrowing Owls are one of the few birds that live in a hole in the ground, and they are the only ground-dwelling owl. They are capable of digging their own burrows in soft soil, but generally use holes dug by ground squirrels.  They were once a common grassland bird, but their habitat has been greatly diminished by agriculture and housing.  Currently they breed in the Central Valley, but the owls that winter in Chavez Park may have raised their young as far away as Idaho.  Here in Berkeley, the ground squirrels and owls have been able to create comfortable living quarters along the stone rip-rap that separates the landfill from the bay.  Many park regulars make a habit of looking for the owls when they walk the perimeter trail between October and March.…

“I’m not really a birder”

“I’m not really a birder”

Note: Golden Gate Bird Alliance is delighted to reprint this blog post by Rue Mapp, founder of Outdoor Afro, an organization that reconnects African-Americans with natural spaces and one another through recreational activities such as camping, hiking, biking and birding. Rue lives in Oakland with her three children and worked as a Development Associate at GGBA in 2009-10.

By Rue Mapp

“I’m not really a birder.”

This is how I began my group introduction this weekend at a summit of leading bird and travel bloggers from around the United States in Tucson, Arizona. In this crowd, I considered labeling myself a birder risky, like I might be ousted as an imposter from the group of world-traveled birding experts with hundreds of species on their life lists.

But Sharon Stiteler — otherwise known as “Birdchick” — challenged me.

“Do you own a pair of binoculars?” she asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said.

“And how many bird books do you own?”

I stared at her blankly as I started running through my mind the bird guides I owned, and wondered if I should count the wildlife photography books too…

But before I could respond, Sharon said with a shrug, “You’re a birder.”

Busted.

Our group came together to network and help Swarovski Optik (yes, the crystal folks) learn about the role of social media and bloggers to connect more people to the world of birding through their premium lenses. And over two days of focused bird searching and observing in the stunning mountains and valleys surrounding beautiful Tucson, we each had a chance to try out a variety of scopes and binoculars that put the bins I have been using at home these past two years to shame.

Bloggers with optics / Photo by Outdoor Afro

But there was something else about my birder disclaimer that nagged at me over the weekend, and I finally realized it had a lot to do with how the birding community is perceived beyond its traditional participants.

You see, many people I know have not even heard of the term “birding” as an activity to do, much less be.

For generations, African Americans have known and identified birds and other wildlife necessary for living in close contact with rural land and for pleasure. But in recent generations, as more of us have moved to busy cities that distract us from the natural world, there is an opportunity to re-engage the appetite for birding again, although it is critical to make the experience directly relevant to how people can expand their quality of life.…

Learning to be a bird photographer

Learning to be a bird photographer

By Bob Lewis

I took a class with bird photographer Artie Morris in San Diego some years ago. His co-leader was Todd Gustafson, a well-known African safari photographer.  Todd had some guidelines for being a good nature photographer, which went something like this:

  • Have good equipment. (That doesn’t mean the most expensive or latest-version cameras. It means equipment that you can depend on, that will do what you want it to do.)
  • Know your equipment. (How to set the camera down a stop, where the autofocus button is, where to stand to be close but not inside the close-focusing capability of your lens, etc.)
  • Have a plan. What do you hope to shoot: Shorebirds, migrants, heron nests, etc.?
  • Know where to go to find your subject – and know when to go so the lighting and tide and wind direction are right.
  • Know your subject. Does it feed in the mud or sand?  Will it defend a territory?  Is it courting or delivering food to a nest?  Is it likely to offer a wing-flap when preening?  In other words, spend some time learning the behavior of your subject so you can anticipate behaviors.
  • Be prepared. Expect the action or behavior you are hoping to capture, and anticipate the exposure requirements of the shot.  Watch for warning signs, like chicks’ agitation or beak opening to presage arrival of an adult with food.
  • Be quiet, move slowly, be patient. It may take time for the bird to arrive, and you may need to reposition yourself to get the right angle with the light, or arrival of the bird.
  • Push the button.

    Know where to go: We wanted the warm feeling of evening light, but to be “up light” from these Royal Terns, we stood in the ocean, positioned so our shadows were near but not on the birds. We needed an ebb tide to provide them with a roosting place. Photo by Bob Lewis.

These are all good guidelines, and although I probably don’t always follow them, I usually wish I had.  But Todd didn’t talk about all the post-button-push activity, like downloading your image, archiving it in Lightroom, developing it in Photoshop, posting it on Flickr, printing at Costco or matting and framing.

And he didn’t mention the most important issue of all – why are you taking the picture, and what do you plan on doing with it?  The requirements for a good blog photo are different from those for a large format print or a projected image. …