Geese at Shorebird Festival

So it's April Fools Day 2012

Stellar Jays are the cameleon of the Pacific Northwest. You always know when you see them because there is no mistaking their dark blue color. But their "vocabulary" mimics many other birds. Here (in a cropped version) two of them were making lunch of a sunflower at the end of autumn. In their antics they even hung upside down from the flower head extracting the sunflower seeds.

Prairie Falcon

I love the birds. Over time they have been a "constant". Regardless of other themes, I return to birds always. I use the analogy of bird life in nature many times in therapy. How birds, and all things in nature, live by a rhythm that we as humans seem to have a hard time with. There is no confusion about the stages of life in nature.

Friends

This is a good thought with which to leave this holiday weekend. PiePie and PoohBear (now looking down on this household) both reached a good old age of 18 years.

Peregrine by any other color ...

In comments we talked about cutting/cropping art work. This is one of those crops. Peregrine by any other color is still Peregrine

This is an experiment inspired by "illumination". Centuries ago writing and painting was beautifully enhanced by gold 'leaf' and paint giving it a spiritual quality.

The idea for this came in a boring meeting when my mind sailed away, inspired by my daughter (the eagle) and her hubby (the dolphin) and I sketched out and then painted fairly quickly a good sized canvas which resides in their house (somewhere in DC).

In celebration of my ongoing love affair with the peregrine spirit. This was painted at a time when the peregrine was in serious difficulty from DDT. That has somewhat abated, here in the United States, but I think, not in other places of the world.

This is the third time I painted this eagle. The first two paintings got destroyed.... At one time I thought I would paint the accompanying "destructive" version - same layout, no trees, no eagle, all in brown and orange with a city skyline on the horizon partially obscured by smog. But the thought of spending that much time on such a negative view has been overwhelming up to this point.

I painted this in response to dolphin slaughter "somewhere in the world". The bay was blocked, the water was red with their blood after the clubbing, the spirit of dolphins is ongoing.

Moving right along

Looks like I have the basic moves in place. So I will add at leisure and comment as appropriate.