I took a chair and sat it near the bird feeder, getting ready to sketch. Only the ground was so soft from the rains that the back legs kept sinking in when I leaned back in the chair; not a good angle to sketch from. I moved the chair around and this happened three times before I found a spot that held up the chair. I leaned forward while sitting, so that may have helped.

Not quite complete

This is the same decorative hanger as in yesterday’s sketch, but a different feeder. I moved the hangers to a different spot because I changed out one of the feeders. I am not using this domed feeder as intended. You are supposed to lower the dome, leaving just enough room for the small birds, like finches, to get in. The lowered dome will keep out the larger birds, like grackles and doves. It worked that way for me, for a while.

However, my doves, grackles, and red-winged blackbirds must be a bit hefty, because they would sit on top of the dome trying to get to the food and cause it to loosen and sink. I would come out each day to fill the feeder and find that the dome was all the way down. I fretted that one day they would trap a finch in the lower, feeding part, so eventually I gave up trying to keep out the larger birds. I now leave the dome raised up all the way, but I put bird seed on the (broken) picnic table as a decoy. This works somewhat, but not completely. The larger birds do eat the seed from the table, but also from the dome feeder. Oh, well.

Finch at the feeder in the rain

As soon as I sat down to sketch, I noticed the dark clouds to the south and they seemed to be moving at quite a fast clip. I had a mere four minutes of sketching time before I had to leap up and make for the shelter of the front porch. (I shouldn’t have wasted so much time tilting my chair back into the soft clay.) Then I noticed I hadn’t photographed my sketching subject, so had to go back out to do that. With those dark clouds moving in, I hurried to upload my photos before our Internet connection failed or our electricity went out.

When I opened my sketchbook to photograph the sketch, I found I had skipped two pages and had put sketches 141 and 142 where sketches 143 and 144 should have been. I even had the pages numbered beforehand, but somehow hadn’t noticed that. My sketchbook even has the built-in ribbon bookmark. I mean, what was I thinking?!

And this, my friends, is an example of why I call my blog “It’s a long story,” because almost everything is. A long story, that is.

Storm clouds

Sketch 143: Bird Feeder