Greater Striped Swallow

“Daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and takes the winds of March with beauty.”
- William Shakespeare


Done in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - Maree©

My Swallows were late in leaving this year, still saw them around just a week ago. Now their twitterings that I love to listen to as they swoop over my garden or sit on my Satellite dish are silent. They returned to their old home in the pump house in early September 2010 and I'm always humbled and honoured to think that they choose to return to me after thousands of miles of travelling.

They managed to rear two babies this season and it was a delight watching the parents teaching them all the sweeping moves over our vast expanse of grassland and it wasn't long until they too were balancing on the wires strung up in my (open-air) potting shed, which I use to hang flowers for drying, happily calling to one another. It's always a worry to me, wondering whether the babies will make the long journey safely. And it's always only the parents returning every year (for the past 5 years now), so I often wonder where the babies head off to...?

If our summer is exceptionally hot or dry, I leave the hosepipe dripping on an empty piece of ground in the garden and have spent hours watching them gather mud for their nest-building.

Some info : The Greater Striped Swallow (Hirundo cucullata syn. Cecropis cucullata) is a large swallow. It breeds in Southern Africa, mainly in South Africa, Namibia and southern Zimbabwe. It is migratory, wintering further north in Angola, Tanzania and southern Zaire.
The Greater Striped Swallow builds a bowl-shaped mud nest with a tubular entrance on the underside of a suitable structure. The nest has a soft lining, and is often reused in later years. It is common, unafraid of humans, and has benefited from the availability of nest sites around habitation. It feeds mainly on flying insects, but has been known to eat small fruits. It's conservation status is LC (Least Concern).

Now see what you've done!

We received a notification from Eskom (our electricity supply commission) that they were doing maintenance on the sub-station in our area (Tarlton, South Africa), and that the electricity would be off from 9am to 5pm (it only came back on at 8pm!), so I had a day of no "RedBubble" ahead of me! OK, I did have a wonderful day painting, and in between I decided to give the garden a bit of water.

I used the hosepipe, as I love the feel of the water as I compress it to reach plants far into the bed and, besides which, it's almost like meditating, gives me lots of time to think and just enjoy the sunshine.

After I'd done quite a good soaking in one of my beds, out crawled this little Striped Field Mouse, soaking wet and looking quite bedraggled! He looked me straight in the eye as if to say, "Now see what you've done!" and promptly started cleaning and drying himself. I gingerly put the hosepipe down and rushed inside for my camera, hoping that he would stay put, and I was lucky. Upon my return, he was still in the same spot, slightly drier, but very intent on getting back to normal! He didn't seem at all perturbed by my presence and didn't move away until he was thoroughly dry again.

Camera : FujiFinepix 2800Zoom Digital - normal settings


Now this is disgusting!


It's still wet behind my ears...


Aaah, that's a bit better!

Struthio camelus

“An ostrich with its head in the sand is just as blind to opportunity as to disaster.”

The Ostrich (struthio camelus) is a member of a group of birds known as ratites, that is they are flightless birds without a keel to their breastbone, and are native to Africa. Of the 8,600 bird species which exist today, the ostrich is the largest. Standing tall on long, bare legs, the Ostrich has a long, curving, predominantly white neck. The humped body of the male is covered in black patches and the wings and tail are tipped with white. The female is brown and white. These huge birds, which sometimes reach a height of 2.6 m and a weight of 135 kg, cannot fly, but are very fast runners.

Here in South Africa, Ostriches were almost wiped out in the 18th century due to hunting for feathers. By the middle of the 19th century, due to the extensive practice of ostrich farming, the ostrich population increased. The movement changed to domesticating and plucking ostriches, instead of hunting. Ostriches have been successfully domesticated and are now farmed throughout the world, particularly in South Africa, for meat, feathers and leather. The leather goes through a tanning process and is then manufactured into fashion accessories such as boots and bags.

I don't have any nice pics of Ostriches myself, so I decided to do this sketch for this post. Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©

Gentle Giant

“Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured.”
- Indian Proverb

"African Elephant" - Acrylic on Canvas - Maree©

With a height of just over 3 - 4m (measured at the shoulder), a length of between 6 to 7.5m (that's the length of an average motor car garage!) and weighing in at 6 tonnes, these mostly gentle giants of the African bush are highly intelligent with a strong sense of family and herd, and a complex social structure.

Elephants are incredibly social animals: they form strong, long-lasting bonds within their herd. They adopt orphaned calves, help injured elephants and work together. They have surprisingly complicated behavioural patterns and interactions. An injured member may be helped to its feet and supported by other herd members: if it is badly wounded, it may be vigorously defended by the herd, with even the calves taking part. Although elephants are normally peaceful individuals, they can be aggressive and extremely dangerous, especially if they are sick or injured. Females in groups with young are particularly unpredictable, as are males in musth.

Here in Africa they are native to a wide variety of habitats including semi-desert scrub, open savannas and dense forest regions. Besides its greater size, it differs from the Asian elephant in having larger ears and tusks, a sloping forehead, and two “fingers” at the tip of its trunk, compared to only one in the Asian species.

For this sketch, I looked at many different photographs from a great many angles, and developed this stance from all the 'information' I had gathered in my mind.

Acrylic on Acrylic Gesso primed un-stretched acrylic canvas sheet 12" x 8"

If you would like to buy a print of this painting, go to RedBubble or e-mail me if you are interested in the original.

Jacky Hangman

My morning prayer :
“Bless the flowers and the weeds, my birds and the bees.”

This is a page from one of my Nature Journals - Watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm Watercolour Sketch-book - 12" x 8" - Maree©

The Fiscal Shrike has been a busy little lady, filling up her larder in one of my Celtis trees - this morning I found a Finch fledgling spiked through one of the thorns on the tree and Jackie was sitting close-by, keeping a watchful eye on me.

I love my Shrikes living in my garden and they know when I approach the feeding tables that it's snack-time. I have a special feeder just for them, where I fill a pine cone with mince and suet, their favourites.

They provide me with hours of pleasure, watching and sketching them as they either sit in the top of an old dead tree or swoop down suddenly, landing on target of some tasty morsel. They are cheeky and precocious, harassing other birds no end, making sure their territory is clear of competition for food. They are also not past raiding nests, often taking newly hatched nestlings, much to my consternation as I helplessly watch.

The Fiscal Shrike is also named 'Jacky Hangman' due to its habit of impaling its prey on Acacia thorns to store the food for later consumption. In my garden they also use the White Karee, which has thorns all along it's trunk when it is young. My Fiscals often spike grasshoppers, small lizards and even mice on these large thorns and they also use the barbed wire and the spikes on top of the palisade fencing.

One of the Shrike's larders in the Celtis africana

Camera: Kodak C195 Digital

Safe and Snug

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do.
Their young ones are hungry,
Their nests are so bare;
All it takes is tuppence from you."
- From "Feed The Birds", Mary Poppins

Let the farmer remember that every bird destroyed, and every nest robbed, is equivalent to a definite increase in insects with which he already has to struggle.  He will soon appreciate the fact that he has a personal interest, and a strong one, in the preservation of birds.

A Weaver's nest in my garden (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa) after a rain storm this morning.

Camera : Kodak EasyShare C195

Where have all the Guineas gone? .....♪♪♪♫

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.
- Roger Tory Peterson


Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - Maree©

I used to have dozens of guinea fowl pass through our smallholding here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), but these days it's like Christmas seeing just a few of them. When we moved to Tarlton in the middle 70's, we were one of a few owners living on the smallholdings and there were large tracts of open land with hundreds of mammals, birds and reptiles that crossed our paths daily. Snakes were rife and regularly had to be removed to a safer place, now we only see a snake a couple of times in the year. I used to have wild hares entering my garden and eating my Marigolds; I haven't seen an hare for about 7 years. The same with hedgehogs, monitors, tortoises and jackal.

The area is now totally built up and our smallholding is now flanked by people on all sides, property fenced and surrounded by high walls - there are few, if any, empty tracts of land any more and I'm just wondering where all the wildlife has managed to find a safe refuge...

Here's wishing everybody a beautiful festive season and many years of joy and inspiration!