“Hummingbird Flight I (Ruby-throated)” 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper Most birds fly with upstrokes and downstrokes, generating all their lift and power on the downstroke of each wing beat. Hummingbirds, however, stroke their wings forward and backward, pivoting up to 180 degrees at the shoulder to rotate the wing. This pattern, with the wingtip tracing a horizontal figure eight in the air with...
“Hummingbird Flight II (Ruby-throated)” 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper It’s notable that hummingbirds are carnivores (nectar is just the fuel to power their fly catching activity), and depend on insects that are not abundant in subfreezing weather, so most of them must retreat back “home” to Central America in the winter or risk...
“Mixed Flock” 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper Locally, Chickadees, Titmice, Golden-crowned kinglets, Downy Woodpeckers, Brown Creepers and White-breasted Nuthatches will often band together in the Midwestern forests to find food, called commensal feeding, mutually enhancing success and...
Peregrine’s Collection 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper Adult Peregrine falcons like to hang around various tall buildings around the U-M campus, especially the 192-foot tall Burton Tower, where they may have nested in the past. Janet Hinshaw, the bird division collection manager for the U-M Museum of Zoology, has collected many remnants of their meals at the base of the tower such as...
“Night Migration (Warblers)” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper SOLD The majority of land birds migrate at night. Most of these birds live in woodlands and other sheltered habitat. They are not extremely agile fliers so need dense habitat to avoid bird predators. Migration at night means fewer predators. The air in the atmosphere is usually less turbulent than during the day and the...
“Tangled Understory I” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper Carolina wrens, Brown Thrashers, White-Throated Sparrows, and Eastern Towhees love to move low through tangled understory; they frequent backyard brush piles and areas choked with vines and bushes that are abundant in Michigan neighborhoods and nature...
“Tangled Understory II” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper Carolina wrens, Brown Thrashers, White-Throated Sparrows, and Eastern Towhees love to move low through tangled understory; they frequent backyard brush piles and areas choked with vines and bushes that are abundant in Michigan neighborhoods and nature...
“Tangled Understory III” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper Carolina wrens, Brown Thrashers, White-Throated Sparrows, and Eastern Towhees love to move low through tangled understory; they frequent backyard brush piles and areas choked with vines and bushes that are abundant in Michigan neighborhoods and nature...
“Cortex” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper What determines cognitive abilities is not the number of neurons in the entire brain but in the cerebral cortex. Birds, particularly Songbirds & Parrots, have as much ‘cortex’ and neuron density as we do relatively. But it’s not organized the same. We both have 75% of our forebrain as cortex. Nerve cells in mammal’s neocortex are stacked...
“Strike 1” 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper Up to one one billion birds die each year in the United States when they hit glass windows, walls, and other structures, making this threat one of the most costly to bird populations. But it’s also a relatively easy problem to solve. Check out American Bird Conservancy website for everything you can do for window strikes...
“Strike II” 30″ x 20″ Graphite on Paper If you find any deceased birds you may bag, freeze and mark with date, time, likely cause of death and location and take them to your local university zoology collection or natural history museum to contribute them to science. *STATE AND FEDERAL PERMITS ARE REQUIRED to legally possess native birds, their feathers, bones, eggs, etc. If...
“Sandhill Cranes I” 69″ x 48″ Graphite on Tyvek SOLD Sandhill Cranes mate for life, choosing their partners based on dancing displays. Their populations recover slowly, partly because each breeding pair usually has only one chick per year that survives to fledging. The Michigan State legislature continues to consider adding Sandhill Cranes as a game hunting species in Michigan. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service...
“Sandhill Cranes II” 69″ x 48″ Graphite on Tyvek During migration, the birds may fly as much as 400 miles in one day. Evidence points to cranes as the oldest known bird species surviving on Earth. A crane fossil found in Nebraska, estimated to be about 10 million years old, is identical in structure to the modern sandhill...
“Red-Winged Blackbirds (On the Huron)” 48″ x 48″ Graphite on Tyvek SOLD The Red-winged Blackbird is a highly polygynous species, meaning males have many female mates – up to 15 in some cases. In some populations 90 percent of territorial males have more than one female nesting on their territories. One-quarter to one-half of nestlings turn out to have been sired by someone other...
Searching the Burn (Three Toed and Black Backed Woodpeckers) 48″ x 60″ Graphite on Tyvek SOLD Both Three Toed and Black Backed Woodpeckers are uncommon arctic species of woodpeckers found in the northern coniferous forests preferring these burned-over sites in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They move from place to place, following outbreaks of wood-boring beetles in recently burned habitats. Instead of boring into...
“Migration I” 48″ x 60″ Graphite on Tyvek SOLD On any given night in the spring and fall, hundreds of thousands—and at times millions—of birds migrate across North America. Of the more than 650 species of North American breeding birds, more than half are migratory. Some species, like waterfowl, follow preferred pathways on their annual migrations that are often related to stopover locations that...
“Migration II” 48″ x 60″ Graphite on Tyvek SOLD Birds combine several different types of senses when they navigate. Birds can get compass information from the sun, the stars, and by sensing the earth’s magnetic field. They get information from the position of the setting sun, from landmarks seen during the day and for some the sense on smell plays a roll....
“Raven in the Norther Wood” 20″ x 30″ Graphite on Paper Common Raven’s Michigan range is the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula, and they are common in the jack pine forest. In studies Crows and Ravens will balk at doing work for less reward than a peer is getting and also delay gratification if they think a reward is worth waiting for. This...
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