Spirit Birds

A few days ago, while chatting in a group chat with all of us, we spontaneously decided to assign “spirit birds” to each other. The spirit bird, in some way, had to connect to the person’s personality or history with birds. As this was occurring, I had an idea. What if I drew all of the birds that represent us together? So, I did.

I started by researching the average length of each of the species we chose, so I could arrange them from longest to shortest. Then, I found the pictures I needed on Google Images, cropped them so it just showed their heads, and began outlining the profile of the birds in pencil. (I kind of ran out of room on one sheet of paper, so I had to tape another sheet to it, which is why you can see a seam through the picture. Oops…) Once that was completed, I went back in and colored them in with colored pencil. Below is the final product:

From left to right, the birds are as follows: Rich Hull (rhull3) is the Golden Eagle, Hannah Mirando (hm022) is the Snowy Egret, Joshua Glant (joshuaglant) is the Eurasian Wigeon, Cameron Darnell (birdcam77gmailcom) is the Peregrine Falcon, Eliza Fraser (elizabirder) is the Resplendent Quetzal, I am the Gray Catbird, Eddie Kasper (elk5pabu) is the Pine Grosbeak, Jonah Benningfield/MOBL (mobl123) is, of course, the Mountain Bluebird, Carolina Fraser, who is not an author of this blog, but does wonderful photography (check it out on her website: http://www.carolinafraserphotography.com, Instagram: @carolinafraserphotography, or Facebook: Carolina Fraser Photography) is the Carolina Wren, and Ryan Zucker (rjzucker) is the Wilson’s Warbler.

Personally, I had a great time drawing this, and I feel that it shows a lot about our group, as well. Even though we are all very different, we are all connected through what we love: birds.

Until next time!

Madelyne Ray