Killing time while I wait to start my next big Nguni, I decided to do something different, Hoopoes. We have a pair of African Hoopoes in our garden; so there are several perfect photo opportunities. I do want to do a proper painting again, ( I did one many years ago) but decided to just do some rough sketching for now. This afternoon we are going to photograph an Nguni Stud, at Gelyksfontein, on the road to Colesburg.
Some orders are just beyond challenging! They are enough to make one wonder why we take on commissions. This one is for an American hunter who targets the pigeons that raid the sunflower fields of the northern Freestate.
The fields are ready for harvesting, but the Rock pigeons descend in large flocks to eat the seeds. How dull the painting would have been with only fields ready for harvesting, as it is no doubt in reality. But this is art and needs to suggest the situation without looking like a war zone. So I have added a separate field with flowers still young, to brighten the painting and enhance the subject. It is unlikely that there would be crops at such different stages in development on any sunflower farm, but it was important for the painting.
The sunflower farmers have no alternative but to hire hunters to come to their aid. I don’t like killing anything, but as we face the same problem with Jackal and Lynx raiding our sheep flocks; I do understand their situation. All I can do now is hope that the client will be satisfied.
The beautiful Bokmakierie belongs the Bush Shrike family and is such a colourful resident of our otherwise drab winter garden. Although they live and nest here, it is seldom that I am able to photograph them. How lucky I was, and of course a sketch was inevitable !
One of the painting commissions from the client who took photos in the Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya, was of the Whitebacked Vulture. (It was not the Serengeti as I first thought.)
This painting inspired me to make a couple of other studies that are posted here. Researching these vultures revealed many amazing facts about them. The Rueppell’s Griffon, is said to be the highest flying bird, with a recording of 11,000 metres or 36,100 feet, and their wingspan reaches 2.6 metres or 8,5 feet!!
Here on Silvermere, we have the Cape Vulture, which I haven’t painted yet. These vultures come for the carcasses of sheep and cattle that die in the veld. We sometimes have flocks of about 50 on one carcass. It is wonderful to have them now, as they have been absent for many many years. We still hear reports that they were becoming an endangered species, but at least we have a flock that we see from time to time. Here are a couple of photos that I took of our Cape Vultures that roost on the power lines nearby.
Some time ago I posted a blog featuring the seed-eaters under the title; ‘Feeding the Birds’. I really love the birds, so I continue to photograph them in and around our garden. Those that come to the bird table outside my studio window are a wonderful and colourful distraction. We feed them seeds and crushed maize, bread crusts, grated cheese, dry cooked maize porridge called, ‘Umphokoqo’, and fruit. The oranges have to be attached with wire to keep them from falling onto the ground below.
As it is the fruit-salad season at the moment, with oranges and paw-paws in abundance, I have kept the fruit–eating birds happy with all the fruit-skins that they enjoy. The first birds that come for them include; the Crested and Pied Barbets, the Mousebirds, The Red-eyed Bulbuls and many more. The Crested Barbet is so bright and cheerful while all around winter hues still drape the garden in sombre tones of ochre and grey, and the seed-eating weavers have yet to clothe themselves in their bright breeding plumage of red and yellow. Therefore I decided to make a small study of some of these fruit-eaters. The bright and dainty Cape White-eyes are my favourites, so I chose two compositions with them.
The regular ritual of feeding the birds inspired this latest set of pictures.
Several years ago we raised guinea fowls from eggs found in the Lucerne lands, and rescued them before the tractor went over their nests. We set them under broody hens, which successfully reared the large clutches of young guineas. When they grew up, they re-joined the wild flocks that live around here. But they always return when they get hungry, and many of the other weavers, sparrows and doves have enthusiastically taken to the daily feeding and arrive in large numbers to mingle with the guinea fowl.
A quote from the Evangelical priest and scholar John Stott who wrote a sermon series called; “The Birds our Teachers”.
“Jesus himself referred to birds in his famous Sermon on the Mount. According to the old English version he said ‘consider the fowls of the air’, but in basic English this is a command to ‘watch birds’. When Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer, got to this verse in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, he became quite lyrical. He wrote: ‘Let the little birds be your theologians … We have as many teachers and preachers as there are little birds in the air’. So I’ve sometimes said in rather jocular fashion that I’m developing a new science called ‘orni-theology’, – the theology of birds.”
Overheard In An Orchard
Said the Robin to the Sparrow
“I would really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.”
Said the Sparrow to the Robin
“Friend I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
Such as cares for you and me.”
–Elizabeth Chaney – 1859
For older images you can upload here.