Winter Birding

I love watching and photographing birds. This past summer/fall I was reading The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer and got in touch with a practice she calls "breathing exercises". You can read more about it in this post. Simply put, breathing exercises are finding things to do that stimulate our senses and nourish our creativity. I found that taking photo walks fits the bill for me. In addition to stimulating my senses and building my creative energy, I found that the time spent on photo walks also restores my emotional energy and is a time of solitude and connecting with God. At that time I decided to fully embrace birding and started keeping a nature journal and learning more about how to identify the birds and their habits.

Other than putting up some feeders in our backyard I wasn't planning on continuing to bird watch through the winter. But then I stumbled on the Window on Wildlife areas (mentioned in Tuesday's post) in some of our Metroparks and winter birding opened up wide for me. I stopped at one of the parks after my budget meeting on Sunday. It was a good way to relax after the meeting and we had our first snow of the year, so it was a good time to see what the birds were up to.

Goldfinch and female House Finches

Finally got the quick little Chickadee in a photo!

Male Downy Woodpecker

Female Cardinal

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Tufted Titmouse

White-breasted Nuthatch (one of my fav's!)

Even the deer come over and watch the birds!

On my list of winter birds that I have not seen as a Junco. On Sunday I finally saw one. Then the next morning in my backyard a pair of them appeared!

Junco at the park

Junco's in my backyard

Some pages I worked on last month in my nature journal:

Enjoy your day and find some ways to "breathe" this week!

Vacation and Art - Part 2

The second half of our vacation was spent in the Harrisburg, PA area. We really enjoy taking Fall vacations. The weather is usually cooler, yet still wonderful. We had a perfect week in the upper 60's and lower 70"s and sunshine almost every day. The bonus: it was peak color time in the mountains.  Experiencing fall colors on rolling hills is much different than in flat Northwest Ohio.

While my husband visited an antique auto show I bopped around the Harrisburg and Hershey area visiting art supply stores and taking a photo walk in a park along the Susquehanna River.

On our way home we took a side trip to Falling Water, which is probably the best known Frank Lloyd Wright house. It was an incredible tour of an amazing house. And the fall colors enhanced the experience.

I saw a lot of birds on my vacation and recorded them in my nature journal.

A page from the notebook I've been doing quote art in. Curved edges are an idea from Bernice Hopper's class The Promised Land on the HKC site.

Reading about breathing exercises in The Creative Call and making a habit of taking photo walks as my breathing exercise has been one of the most beneficial things I've done in a long time. It combines solitude and self-care and exercise with being outside in nature enjoying the works of the Creator.

That's all for me today. I'm off to Bliss Cottage and a weekend with my sister. :) Enjoy your weekend!

Monday Meandering 9.21.15

This month's theme for the HKC Take Me Deeper devotions is the promises of God. I had made background pages in advance last month when I was playing with my new 4" round Gelli plate. Doing them all at once created a theme.

September Week 1

September Week 2

September Week 3

Last week, after reading about breathing exercises in The Creative Call, I determined to start taking photo walks in nature. I took two last week and found them to be both relaxing and stimulating. I saw so many types of birds. I wrote about breathing exercises and the birds I saw in my last post. Today I took another photo walk at the park along the river. Today I spotted a Green Heron for the first time. He was in no hurry to go anywhere and didn't seem to mind my getting close to him. The Green Heron is so much smaller than the Blue Heron's I typically see. He was only about 14 inches when he extended his neck.

I only saw water birds today: Blue Heron, Egret, Sandpiper, and female Mallards with their pretty blue stripes. I purchased a Moleskine watercolor notebook to begin keeping notes and pictures from my photo walks. Any excuse to start another journal! I'm even trying some watercolor in this one.!

I hope you have a good week and are able to make time to breathe. :)