Birdwatch

February

Hello

Welcome to February and to a month exploring Garden Birds. Its lovely to have made it out of January and to be edging closer to spring, yesterday here in Yorkshire we had a lovely sunny walk, it was good to feel winter sunshine on my face and to see the snowdrops poking through in the garden.

I wanted to explore birds for this months Substack, watching the birds in our garden is a daily activity that brings me joy, we have a small garden with a few bird feeders and at this time of year we have many birds to observe and enjoy. As a family we took part in the RSPB birdwatch last weekend and counted many goldfinch, bluetits, blackbirds and robins. After looking through my sketchbooks realised it is not a subject I have spent much time on and therefore I am excited to spend a month drawing and painting birds!

This is a chart that we have been looking at as part of the RSPB garden birdwatch, it shows the most common birds here in the UK, I am aware they will be different in other parts of world so it would be lovely to find out what are the most common birds where you are. I am definitely not a bird expert but simply enjoying the process of learning more.

I spent a couple of hours looking out the window and playing in sketchbooks at the weekend and realised just how tricky it can be to capture birds so I am going to break February into 4 different subjects to explore, one subject a week.

Shape Colour Details Paint

Starting with bird shapes this week, we can explore the silhouettes and shapes of birds perched and flying. Then we will look at colours, details and I really fancy trying out some small bird paintings for the final week of February. If you would like to join us you can upgrade here.