House Wren

A House Wren perched on early spring Saucer Magnolia branch.  I did this illustration for a donor to the park where I work.  

Life List Notebooks

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been working on a new project, well here it is.

I have always kept lists of the birds I see in the field while working on different projects or simply bird watching, but I have never had a notebook dedicated to birds.  Last fall I decided I was going to find and buy a birding notebook and start keeping a life list on January 1st 2016.  Well, I couldn't find what I wanted on Google.  I found some artsy handmade ones on Etsy and some hurricane-proof Rite-in-the-Rain ones, but I wanted something durable enough to last a month in my back pocket but cheap enough to justify having a new one each month.

I found pocket notebooks for beer drinkers, stargazers, wine sippers, comic book artists and even cheese tasters but not for birders, so I decided to make my own!

Then I started thinking how cool it would be if each notebook featured a bird portrait and a cover color to represent that bird - a small feature that would keep the notebooks fresh and completed ones would create a rainbow of birding adventures on my shelf.  So I started with some herons...

Great Blue Heron

 Green Heron

 and Little Blue Heron

I also wanted each notebook to have a little bit of information on the featured species, so they do...

Each inside cover has fields for personal data...

The back inside cover has a Handy Map of Bird Anatomy and some common birding abbreviations...

Each notebook has 23 of  the two-page spread shown below - plenty of room for information, bird lists and a small sketch or two!

If your a birder or know one you can purchase Life List Notebooks at www.lifelistnotebooks.com

I have a some others planned so stay tuned...

Common Loon

Common Loon

Carolina Wren

Great Blue Heron

It has been a long time since I added some new stuff to the blog.  I am working on a new project and will have some new sketches/illustrations coming.  Here is a portrait of one of my favorite birds - Great Blue Heron!