Bobolink

I've finished a series of three New World Blackbirds. I love painting birds because their form and feather patterns are easy to capture.

Bobolink sings a song that sounds like the water washing across a rocky creek bed, Emily Dickinson to William Cullen Bryant used this birds song in their writings to explain the start of spring. The birds arrive in the spring across the grasslands of the northern United States and southern Canada. The male Bobolink has black-and-white breeding plumage, which looks like a backward tuxedo. There is no other North American songbird with this color scheme.

The bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) is a small New World blackbird and the only member of the genus Dolichonyx. An old name for this species is the "Rice Bird," from its tendency to feed on cultivated grains. Adults are 16–18 cm (6.3–7.1 in) long with short finch-like bills and weigh about 1 oz (28 g). (wikilinks)

11 x 14 inches, 300lb cold press cotton paper, watercolor, and gouache

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