Crow wears a silver band

W&N watercolour on Amedeo 200gsm
Cape or Black Crow (Corvus capensis) – endemic to Africa
With thanks to John from Midmarsh Jottings for the use of his beautiful photograph.

Crow wears a band of silver on his ankle, holds it out to watch it glint in the sun like cool creek water. It is noon. He is the only one out. All others have sought shelter under the canopy of live oak, the leaves beneath the chaparral, Crow, the only one among them unafraid to cast a shadow. He is a black body to absorb the sun’s heat, and yet unheated.

He’s silver studded with stones, turquoise to match the cloudless sky. He stretches out his leg again, watches sky and water glisten on his ankle.

He flexes claws and brings his foot beneath him again, stretches out his other, naked foot for balance. His feet are beautiful, furrowed skin like charcoal scales, sharp and onyx claws. As flexible as hands, good for grasping new-hatched thrushes or pulling gate hooks from eye bolts, and sleek. The humans see crow’s feet in the faces of their most seasoned elders, the scars of a learned life spent laughing.

Crows’ feet, the mark of craft and cunning, crow’s feet a sense of humour made skin and sinew.
He swings down on the branch, holds himself upside down and swinging, the silver falling down around his upper leg as he barks in delight. Sky below his feet and swaying, silver pools above his head. The world so beautifully inverted, he cannot keep from laughing. This is beauty: the world turned upside down. You can keep your lithe ingénues, your florid sunsets and cloying sentiment: beauty is all that cleft in two, a cunning spark suspended by crow’s feet, a fall from a deadly height and then the swoop of wing, the thickening of the air beneath splayed feathers. Seeing air rising within air and climbing on it, sun glinting blue-black as night sky off your feathers? Night colours blazing brilliant from your feathers? Beauty is day turned to night and night to day.

Heart beats furious beneath that dark breast, mind burns in onyx eyes. Beauty a glint of laughter in a bottomless dark eye. He barks again.

Sun above live oak, a thousand suns refracted on the earth below. Grasshoppers leap into the air clicking. Wild oats, tawn in the summer heat, lean eastward with the breeze, and a wall of fog on the ocean twenty miles west. All this beauty: all this.
<sup>Story from Coyote Crossing

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Light and shadow

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

... light and shadow reveal a silent presence on a kitchen counter…

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Solly's house

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” 

― Edith Sitwell 

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

Solly’s house (our handiman factotum) on our smallholding (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa) 

No matter the size or location, a true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is moulded.

 Another sketch of Solly's house that I did a few years ago

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Jonathan Seagull

“To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, ”you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived…” 

- From ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ 

After I read “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull” and because of all the Seagulls that often fly over my garden in Tarlton, South Africa (600km from the coast!), I was inspired to do some more Seagull sketches again – I’ve always been enamoured by these birds, especially their plight of constantly being trapped with plastic and metal rings around their necks and feet. It’s a passion that has been lying dormant for some time and awakened by this wonderful little book again.

Something I didn’t know, is that Seagulls are most closely related to the terns (family Sternidae) and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders. But whoever they are related to, I personally would categorise them with Crows, one of my favourite, most intelligent birds! The same as crows, most gulls will take live food or scavenge opportunistically. And their love for man-made “junk food” defies belief! They will go to ANY length for some tasty hot potato chips with tomato sauce!

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Jack Frost's colours

W&N watercolour on a coffee back-ground (Nescafé instant, black and strong!) on Amedeo 200gsm 

There are popular and scientific myths about the causes of fall colour in trees. Jack Frost is alleged to paint tree leaves with his chilling touch, bringing on colour change along with a frosty coating. Another twist on this myth is that Jack Frost brings reds and purples to autumn trees by pinching the leaves with his icy fingers. A less poetic explanation of fall colour, favoured by scientists for decades, is that the autumnal colouring of leaves was caused by waste products accumulated in the leaves and revealed to us with the fading of green chlorophyll pigments. As it turns out, the waste product theory now seems to be considered a bunch of, well, crud. The fall colour pigments are produced, or revealed, only in living leaf cells of deciduous trees during the critical, seasonal process of leaf senescence. In fact, if Jack Frost did his thing too early, or, in other words, if there was an early killing frost, the leaf colour display would be dulled, if not stopped altogether.
- Info from Why Tree Leaves turn color in Autumn

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The Cheetah

Cats (the Cheetah) were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man.
~Paul Gray

  Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)- W&N watercolour, using only Sepia, on Bockingford 300gsm 

The cheetah is a large-sized feline (family Felidae) inhabiting most of Africa and parts of the Middle East. The cheetah is the only extant member of the genus Acinonyx, most notable for modifications in the species’ paws. As such, it is the only felid with non-retractable claws and pads that, by their scope, disallow gripping (therefore cheetah cannot climb vertical trees, although they are generally capable of reaching easily accessible branches).
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My favourite outfit

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

This used to be one of my favourite outfits. Unfortunately the jacket is all frayed on the cuffs and my little red pumps have seen better days! I find it really difficult to find nice jackets. South Africa is never really cold enough for anything too thick, and this cotton one with a satin lining was just perfect.

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Painted Dog

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”
- George Orwell

I did this painting with coffee on a tea-stained back-ground (Nescafé instant, black, and VERY strong!) – Bockingford 300gsm – 12″ × 8″

The Painted dog or African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus), is a medium-sized canid found only in Africa, especially in savannahs and other lightly wooded areas. It is also called the Painted Hunting Dog, African Hunting Dog, the Cape Hunting Dog, the Spotted Dog, the Ornate Wolf or the Painted Wolf in English, Wildehond in Afrikaans, and Mbwa mwitu in Swahili. It is the only extant species in the genus Lycaon, with one species, L. sekowei, being extinct.

There were once approximately 500,000 African Wild Dogs in 39 countries, and packs of 100 or more were not uncommon. Now there are only about 3,000-5,500 in fewer than 25 countries or less. They are primarily found in Eastern and Southern Africa, mostly in the two remaining large populations associated with the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania and the population centered in northern Botswana and Eastern Namibia.

Whilst the largest population resides in the Kruger National Park (South Africa), some wild dogs have been released into Madikwe, Pilanesberg and Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, South Africa.

A winter's morn

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

A winter's morning at a dam in Magaliesburg (Gauteng, South Africa) 

It was still ash-grey on a Sunday morning, but winter was awake already. She was whispering everywhere. She was shaking shaking everything in her path. She seeped through the gaps around the doors and windows. She crawled down the walls and flooded the room with her ice-cold breath. She crept into my bed. Then woke me up and penetrated my duvet. Surrounded by her, I found myself shrinking like an earthworm. I then had to compromise my bed. She enjoyed taking possession. I was trying to sleep with my knees squashed to my head and my arms around my ankles. I was shaking when I felt her presence. I got up and closed the windows. She were trapped, inside. 

- Unknown

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Barn Owl (Tyto alba)

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

Barn Owl (Tyto alba) 

Afrikaans : Nonnetjie-uil 

Ghostly pale and (not) strictly nocturnal, Barn Owls (Tyto alba) are silent predators of the night world. Lanky, with a whitish face, chest, and belly, and buffy upperparts, this owl roosts in hidden, quiet places during the day. By night, they hunt on buoyant wingbeats in open fields and meadows. You can find them by listening for their eerie, raspy calls, quite unlike the hoots of other owls. Despite a worldwide distribution, Barn Owls are declining in parts of their range due to habitat loss. I for one do not see them as often as I used to. 

Once welcomed by farmers as one form of pest control, the population is now under threat from modern farming techniques, e.g. the destruction of hedgerows & meadowland, which affect their prey, the removal of old barns & buildings, which were their nesting places and the use of chemicals to control rodents. 

The Owl Rescue Centre is the only raptor centre in South Africa that primarily focus on owl species. They give all their time and attention to owl species because of the high mortality rate of owls in South Africa, making owls vulnerable to a decreasing population. They rehabilitate and release 200 – 250 Spotted Eagle Owls, 100 – 150 Barn Owls and 80 -100 other owl species each year. 

SHOULD YOU FIND AN OWL THAT YOU SUSPECT MIGHT BE INJURED, PLEASE CALL THEM ON 082 719 5463 (24/7 emergency line – South Africa)

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