I’m not very good at birding, but I keep trying.

Maybe you guessed this already, maybe not. I can draw and paint birds, but my identification skills in the wild are not very good at the moment. There are some reasons/excuses for this. I don’t own binoculars or a scope (I hope to rectify this in 2026). I am extremely myopic (bet you didn’t know this about me), so while I have good spectacles a bird flying or far up in a tree is hard for me to discern. Often I compensate by tuning into the overall shape of the bird, and/or its tail, beak, and wings (thank you David Sibley for including silhouettes of flying birds in your guide). I’m still learning, so each successful identification (this winter that’s usually at the bird feeder or on my walk down the road to get the mail) is one bird closer to getting better at it.

I’ll write about this more in this month’s newsletter, but trying to get better at bird identification is one of the myriad reasons I illustrate birds. (They are beautiful, clever, fascinating, entertaining, confident, and they can fly (!!!) — just to name some other reasons). With drawing you get a crash course in the shapes that make up a specific bird. You become familiar with color patterns and proportions of beak to body, feet to body, wing to body — all helpful clues to identifying a bird. Yes, sometimes the shapes/colors are common among species, but that’s when I rely on another sense like hearing to make the case.

2026 is my “year of the birds” — taking an ornithology course this winter, signed up for Birding University , reading bird books (really enjoy Jennifer Ackerman’s books) and Substacks (some of my recommendations are on the Cricklewood Nature Journal page), consulting bird guides (mostly Sibley) and all the resources available from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, practicing birding skills in my yard, writing about birds (writing and drawing have always been my best learning tools because they rely on research and observation), and drawing/painting a lot of birds (A. LOT.) in an effort to immerse myself in the avian world, which incidentally is our world, too!

There! I’ve just submitted my proposal for my self-appointed artist residency, Ornitherapy. (Thank you Amy Stewart for this idea!)