Meadowlands

I think I've mentioned here before that birding is another of my hobbies. I'm not obsessive about it, and most of my birding is done just watching birds from my own home, counting birds at the feeders in my yard for Cornell University's "Project Feeder Watch". But I do enjoy seeing other birds when I can, and adding to my Life List, such as it is! When I saw that Snowy Owls had been seen wintering in New Jersey's Meadowlands I had a buring desire to go see them. 

So last weekend my sister accompanied me to go on the quest of the Snowy Owls. With the help of other birders we did spot the owl - quite tricky as his camoflage was wonderful, and after watching him a while we decided to go a little further down the road to the marvelous Meadowlands Environment Center to see if we could also spot the rare Eurasian Teal who was said to be wintering there as well. 

With that goal accomplished we strolled back along the waterfront path, and happened to catch sight of a most glorious sunset. I had to snap several photos of it. And then I decided I needed to turn the photos into a painting, so that is the subject of my painting above, done my my new favorite of 9x12 Art Spectrum Colourfix paper, the rose grey color. 

And as a special added bonus, here is a photo below that I took of the Snowy Owl. When I went home to add him to my list I found that he was actually bird number 100 on my Life List, so that made him even more special.