Common Yellowthroat

This beautiful yellow warbler was introduced to me at the banding table at Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge, in Knoxville, Tennessee.  You can see one of my sketches of this bird in an earlier post on this blog.

Banding is a scientific study, an effort to record the occurence of birds during a variety of seasons to aid in assessing the health and numbers of a bird population and to learn about bird use of a given habitat. For me, it also represents the opportunity to study a bird species for future art projects.  The common yellowthroat is a busy warbler species that favors shrubby grassland.  

I have enjoyed getting acquainted with this bird's beauty and spunky personality upclose while helping to record data during banding sessions.  The painting you see above was used as a commemorative print to celebrate the refuge's change to Tennessee's first state birding park!  It was a thrill to bring my refuge observations into this painting for the event!

The common yellowthroat spends much of its time foraging for small insects in the dense vegetation of fields. It's beautiful song, "witchety, witchety, witchety", will always bring to mind summer sunrise on the refuge! Listen to the common yellowthroat song at Cornell's site.

To see the progression of this painting visit:  Common Yellowthroat Painting
To see how I used my sketchbook to help make decisions for the painting visit:  Using your sketchbook to jump-start your painting, and to see more about the celebration event visit:  Seven Islands Becomes First State Birding Park.