I’m currently enjoying a class at Clatsop Community College – Nature Journalling, taught by our friend, Julie Tennis, who is a bit of everything when it comes to nature. A bee keeper, a sketcher, a friend of all creatures. This class is mostly about learning to take field notes; how to observe. We study in class on Wednesdays and go out every other Saturday for a field trip. Last Saturday she arranged for us to visit the Wildlife Center of the North Coast – a place that rescues birds and does it quietly, carefully, and with great compassion.
We first were given a tour of all the pens and then set ourselves up inside a large netted area with cormorants, brants, and two pelicans, an adult male brown and a teen-aged male white. After an hour with the birds (they settle down after we’ve been sitting awhile), we moved on to visit a large group of murres. Cutest little guys; they would approach us and peer at us with questioning eyes.
Isn’t he beautiful? (Photo courtesy of Julie Tennis)
What a treat to learn so much as well as observe while you draw. I can tell that this class makes you very HAPPY!
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This is a wonderful place for the birds and the sketchers. What’s up with that funny bunny critter?
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Not, as one might think, something found at the Wildlife Center. Just a
medieval little guy I met recently.
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These are marvelous, especially the pelicans. That bunny on the gargoyle looks a bit taken aback by all the birds.
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My favorite part of the pelican page is the wonderfully incongruent medieval rabbit-snake-whatever guy. He’s just hanging out at the top of the page, trying to fit in with the birds. But he’s not a 2014 pelican in Astoria. He’s from another time and place! Fresh-sprung from the mind of Christi!
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Not fresh-sprung at all but old old old from the medieval pages of some wondrous Bible. I just know how to copy!
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ps. Hey, isn’t that the leaf skeleton I gave you from my backyard?! Wow. Nice work!
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and oh yes, that is a Colasurdo leaf pressed into the page. Thank you for it.
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Christi, from watching the pelicans, do you know what their head rotation on their neck is?
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ummm … really a lot?
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