Sunday Nature Journal Page-1

I have joined the Nature Blog Network as suggested by a friend. For this purpose I will be posting my nature journal pages, if you subscribe to Illinois Audubon you are familiar with this work . I hope that those that read my blog for other content will be kind in allowing space for these and the Wednesday poetry postings.
My nature journals are dedicated to observations made mostly in my backyard. My interest is to get to know fellow inhabitants of my home. They are members of my extended family, we interact on a daily basis and I am sure they see this place as their home, whether they see me as a member of their tribe remains a mystery. I have given names to many of the resident creatures according to their character. I try not to disturb their niches within the property and try very hard to accept their mischief. They have made me rethink my gardening and landscape practices. For example, I no longer get rid of all the fallen leaves, I keep snags for their habitat value and when safety concerns result in cutting down a tree I leave twenty feet or so of the trunk so that they can transform it into a habitat. One day I noticed that clover patches growing in the lawn were frequently visited by pollinators and Tiger Swallowtails, now I mow these patches only after they have stopped flowering. Twigs and branches that fall from trees are piled here and there to provide shelter. Each year I take more lawn out  and occasional burn portions of the property to facilitate native species growth.

I am not simply interested in compiling lists of fellow creatures, I try to record their interactions and are often surprised by their intelligence and attitude. I do quick sketches or take photos and notes that later are edited to recreate a moment in an illustrated page. The reason these are one page in length is due to the space allotted to me by Illinois Audubon magazine, they are black and white sketches due to the black and white printing of the magazine, however Marilyn Campbell has communicated that Illinois Audubon will switch to color printing, so in the future I may add color to my work as well. I must admit liking the pencil sketch look, perhaps a mix of black and white sketches and occasional colored ones will be a good compromise. I have stories that will take more than one page to tell, given my other commitments I will leave them for future work. Since the pages are meant for Illinois Audubon, the topics surround bird behavior, stories of other creatures, for now, live in my sketchbooks.

This first couple of nature journal pages published were done in quick sketch mode, I wanted to have that sketchbook feeling with text wrapped around the images. I was not pleased with this look after seeing them published, so the following pages were executed with more detailed pencil drawings.