#3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound" Part Two

Draft... I am still polishing this, but here it is anyway...  

#3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound"
20 X 24 inches, oils on canvas.
Started at 9:15 am, Wednesday, June 24th, 2026

There is nothing really unique about this particular deformation zone, which I described in #3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound". Some features require a bit more description so that when you witness another deformation zone, those additional lines will speak to you and tell a more complete tale about the weather. 

Satellite data was a very new tool when I became a meteorologist in 1977. Weather was not the intersection of Venn Diagrams! The weather was much more complicated and beautiful. My artistic background fused with the patterns we were witnessing for the first time. I attended a presentation by Roger Weldon in 1981, and that opened a lot more doors, including the deformation zone conceptual model. 

Skip ahead a decade or two of studying from the real atmosphere. Night shifts were the best to really learn while preparing the all-important first forecasts for a new day. I  sketched the following patterns countless times to anyone who might be mildly interested. The pattern on the left below shows how a constant-area rectangle of moisture must be deformed in a divergent streamline flow. That box of moisture would transform into a line and never get past the col and the two confluent asymptotes which comprise the deformation zone conceptual model. The approaching flow is split in half, with one curving cyclonically (probably rising) and the other turning anticyclonically (probably subsiding). The real atmosphere taught me these lessons.

The pattern above on the lower right illustrates what can happen when the straight-line deformation zone (DZ) is distorted. There are three DZ flavours: Convex (above lower right); the Double Cyclonic Pattern and the Double Anticyclonic Pattern (below left).

The shape of the deformation zone reveals the types and relative strengths of the four vortices that underlie the deformation-zone conceptual model. This provides a much deeper understanding of the weather without any mathematics. 

Search for any or all of "wind, waves and swells" in The Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster and there will be several posts that explain in more detail what follows below. One post you might consider is 

Wind Waves and Swells and Lines in the Sky

The most interesting flow in the atmosphere is the warm conveyor belt, which is responsible for most of the weather we experience. 

The jet core located between the X and the N in the above graphic is responsible for strong vertical motions, which essentially shake the isentropic levels of the atmosphere like a blanket. These vertical motions create strong wind waves like on the ocean. These waves propagate with the flow, evolving into swells, a long distance from where they were created. The rising crests of the swell are more likely to be thick clouds than the descending wave troughs. 

The crests of the swells behave in the same manner as the constant-area boxes of cloud in my simple sketch above. Multiple lines of cloud crowd into the deformation zone, one for each swell crest. 

Wind gravity waves can also be generated along the confluent asymptotes of the deformation zone. These gravity waves occur on both sides of those asymptotes. Those wind waves can only be witnessed by seeing contrasts in the cloud thickness created by the vertical motions in the gravity waves. The best spot to see them is in the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The following graphic attempts to describe this process. 

The following is another attempt to describe the process. I had written "The Radar Palette - an Operational Approach to Radar Meteorology" for COMET. It was modelled after "The Satellite Palette"  but remains unpublished. 

The above descriptions and conceptual models were intended to explain the remaining bits of meteorology that were included in #3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound". The following graphic describes each of them.

Finally, distinct deformation zones happen at different levels in the atmosphere, even though they may appear to be at the same level when looking down from a satellite perspective. Each quasi-horizontal cloud layer intersects the three-dimensional deformation skin, creating a linear feature. In contrast, gravity waves (wind waves and swells) occur on the same stable layer in the atmosphere. Both are perpendicular to the flow creating them. 

The following real-life deformation zones viewed from the ground illustrate how the cloud lines intersect the three-dimensional deformation skin that encloses the warm and moist air mass. 

For more illustrations of the deformation zone conceptual model, you may be interested in the following. 

#2568 "Thursday Sunset Swells" ; #2991 "A Swell February Morning" ; Applied Conceptual Models on the Space and the Earth Views

For this and much more art, click on Fine Art America or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"
24 X 20 (inches) Oils on canvas.
 Started at 9:00 am Saturday, August 1st, 2026

Fiddler's Elbow is the sharp turn between the Short and Long Reaches of Red Horse Lake. The images used to depict the unique character of Red Horse Lake in the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA) brochures all feature the Short Reach. Our home is even visible at Jim Day Rapids in the upper-left portion of photo 3. 

The Short Reach starts at the exit of Jim Day Rapids and extends to the sharp turn into Long Reach at Fiddler's Elbow. The CRCA Red Horse Lake Fact Sheet from 2017 does not explicitly include the Short Reach on its map. I believe this is in error, as there are no rapids at Fiddler's Elbow. The Short and Long Reaches of Red Horse Lake are at the same water levels. 

My friend John Verburg took this particular image after an excellent afternoon spent in the deep waters of Red Horse Lake. I have enjoyed many hours paddling the Short Reach, so I  knew it well.

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"

The real background story behind #3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset" is, however, the Boreal Inferno. The global impacts of the Climate Crisis are just in their initial stages. The raging wildfires around the globe are just the start of the Century of Fire. The full impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels will span the following centuries with ever more dire catastrophes in the offing. Any last-minute disingenuous, political "heroics" to reduce atmospheric carbon might impact the intensity of the pending cataclysms but certainly not prevent them from occurring. Climate has incredible momentum, and the tipping points are already tumbling. 

The Earth has run out of time in just 200 years of releasing the fossilized carbon that was sequestered within Pandora's Box over the last 14 million years. These mind-boggling numbers measuring time raise the question. What is "time"? Humans, being clever, have answered some of that question.  

Sir Isaac Newton viewed time as a strict, universal river that flowed at the same speed everywhere, completely separate from space or observers. Most people still view time that way as a cause-followed-by-effect phenomenon. 

Albert Einstein proved that Newton's absolute time was wrong. Time is fused with the three dimensions of space into a four-dimensional flexible fabric described as "Spacetime". The speed at which time passes depends on how fast you move or the local strength of gravity.  Far out!

Time runs slower near heavy objects or at near-light speeds. In fact, time is a pliable fourth dimension woven with space, keeping the speed of light a constant. Massive objects like stars and planets distort the fabric of spacetime, like a heavy bowling ball resting on a trampoline

Theoretical physicists, including me, still struggle with time. How wonderful it would be if humans could turn back the last 200 years to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1850! 

But time is something the Earth has run out of. The Climate Crisis will make the Earth unrecognizable and uninhabitable for most species within a geological blink of the eye. The climate of the Pleistocene rested on a knife-edge balance of the atmosphere. The constituents of the air were perfectly fair gatekeepers for equitable incoming solar and outgoing thermal radiation. This equilibrium maintained an average global temperature of 13.5°C to 13.8°C. The global average surface temperature in 2025 was the third-warmest year on record, estimated to be approximately 14.97°C to 15.08°C (with varying dataset baselines). The atmosphere also protected life from cosmic rays. Life was very good in Paradise.

Treating the atmosphere as a common garbage dump has pushed the constituents wildly out of stability. The climate that fostered incredible diversity of life has fallen off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and men can't put it back together again... I was even lectured once that "the solution to pollution was dilution." That clever saying might rhyme, but the ideas are utter nonsense like Humpty Dumpty and glad-handing politicians. 

Data from July 29th to August 5th, 2026, while I painted this skyscape.
Red dots are active fire detections or thermal anomalies.

The result of such ignorance and arrogance is manifested by the current wildfires around the globe. Those wildfires provided the colourful hues in the sunset sky and the dangerous PM2.5 pollutants in the air we were breathing.

Time may still not be well understood, but it is already too late! Over time, humans have evolved to be very clever but have never achieved being collectively wise. 

So I stay home, paddle, paint and plant trees. It is a simple life, but it works for me. An artist friend of mine mentioned that life for them had become one of the band on the deck of the Titanic. Collectively, we continue with our creative artistic endeavours but are fully aware that the doomed ship must sink.

Ironically, the following article was published a month before the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. The Titanic was recklessly travelling at its maximum service speed of 22 knots despite receiving multiple ice warnings. Remarkable arrogance...

Francis Molina’s article Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future was published in New York’s Popular Mechanics on March 1st, 1912.

Just a century later (not a few, as hoped for in Popular Mechanics), the Earth is in the verification stages of those dire, "considerable effects". Humans continue to race recklessly into the future, heedless of the warnings that were raised long before the 1912 Popular Mechanics article, dating back to the early 1800s.

The following collage includes the main steps it took to capture the fiery sunset skies due to the Boreal infernos. I take my time to get it right... Life should not be a rush.

I have painted Fiddlers Elbow before: Please see #1743 "Looks Like Thunder"; #1753 "Fiddlers Thunder"; and #2246 "Turtle Point" among several others from nearby locations. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3039 "Hazel-eyed Daisy"

 

#3039 "Hazel-eyed Daisy" 
8 X 10 (inches) oil on canvas.
Started 10:00 am Sunday, August 16th, 2026

I thought I would spend another hour or so with the clump of brown-eyed susans featured in #3038 "Singleton August Bouquet". Every painting will be different, even if the subject is the same. 

A "hazel-eyed daisy" poetically describes the classic ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). Technically, there is no such flower. 

I picked my own hazel-eyed daisy (her name was not Susan) on this date in 1975 - 51 years ago. It was the best decision I ever made ... although I was only half of that selection-making process. A life partner is the only choice that you have to get right the first time. All of your other decisions can be flawed, and you will still get by. Time really does fly when you are having fun. 

Wild and just a little bit crazy... 

An hour spent listening to nature is worthwhile
even if no one understands the art. 

Plein air work is best left alone after completing the brushwork in the field. The oils might be rough, and there will be complementary specks of burnt sienna-tinted canvas showing through, but those "imperfections" are more than just "OK". Any such "blemishes" make the art real. Actually, there are no mistakes in art, just happy accidents, and I own them all.

This is not AI-produced in any way! "Artificially" generated anything is, by definition, synthetic, fake, and just an imitation of what has already been done. AI really needs to be avoided, at least in my small world. The human touch, even with all of the inherent flaws are essential to make the art come alive. 

Step away from the easel and move on. Perhaps grab another canvas...

I have painted brown-eyed susans as well as daisies many times before... 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. If you enjoy this, you might like the Flower Collection...

Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3038 "Singleton August Bouquet"

#3038 "Singleton August Bouquet"
10 X 8 (inches) oil on canvas.
Started 10:30 am Thursday, August 13th, 2026

We had been admiring this clump of brown-eyed susans on the marble ridge all summer. August was starting to cool off. I needed to loosen up en plein air. The sun still got hot, but there was no smoke in the air. Even so, I had to add some finishing highlights in the studio where I could apply those with a steady hand. 

Brown-eyed Susan flowers are native to North America. They are also called Black-eyed Susan, Brown Betty, Ox-eye daisy, poor-land daisy, poor-man's daisy, yellow daisy and goodness knows what else. I prefer the "brown-eyed" name after the 1967 song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. These flowers were painted as they appeared on Thursday, ‎August ‎13th, 2026 at 10:30 am. Linda had admired these flowers, so I decided to give them a try on a seasonal day before it got hot with the afternoon thunderstorms. Those storms blew down some trees and probably structures from Newboro to Smiths Falls and probably beyond. 

Painting, "outstanding in the field..."

The black-eyed Susan flower (Rudbeckia hirta) belongs to the sunflower family and is the state flower of Maryland. It's also a medicinal herb believed to treat colds, flu and even snakebites. Black-eyed Susans are indigenous to many sections of North America. They were introduced into Europe from North America soon after Columbus's visits and were named by Linnaeus in 1753. Linnaeus gave them the Latin name Rudbeckia Hirta after his mentor Olaf Rudbeck. "Hirta" means rough and hairy. 

I have painted them before... 

The above features "Susan" in the name. There might be others in my portfolio. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. If you enjoy this, you might like the Flower Collection...

Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

Phil Chadwick  

#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"

#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"
14 X 11 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 10:30 am Monday, August 10th, 2026

My friend John Verburg took this image after an afternoon of swimming in the beautiful, deep waters of Red Horse Lake. This picture was taken just ten minutes after John composed the inspiration for #3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset" just downstream at the entrance to Long Reach. John Verburg's pontoon boat was very near N44.522211 W76.104719 when he paused to observe this next inspiration at the exit of Jim Day Rapids. John is always on the lookout for something that speaks to him. Typically, what inspires John to photograph also speaks to me, encouraging an interpretation in oils. 

The sky was literally on fire! Smoke from the wildfires in the Boreal Forest and the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the United States wafted all over North America. 

I needed to chronicle those skies for posterity. I am not Edvard Munch (1863-1944), nor is this his most famous work, "The Scream" from 1893. Otherwise, the comparison of witnessing the threats to nature is identical. 

As an aside, I have seen at least one version of "The Scream" at the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo. I was nose-to-nose with countless other incredible works of art, including some selfies by Vincent! The  National Gallery in Oslo was one of the finest galleries I have ever had the opportunity to visit. 

Now back to the story... The Norwegian name of Munch's painting is Skrik, which is 'Scream' in English. The German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur,  'The Scream of Nature' in English. The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art.

In his diary entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Munch wrote:

"One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream."

Munch later described his inspiration for the painting:

"I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

Some scholars believe that Munch was describing a panic attack. They have located the spot along a fjord path overlooking Oslo. In 1893, that road on Ekeberg Hill was near Kristiania (present-day Oslo) and led to a house where the artist lived for a while.

There are various explanations for the unnaturally orange sky, ranging from the effects of a volcanic eruption to a psychological reaction by Munch to his sister's commitment at a nearby lunatic asylum.

Munch,1895, The Scream, Pastel

Munch created two versions in paint and two in pastels, as well as a lithograph stone from which several prints survive. Both painted versions have been stolen from public museums, but have since been recovered. Munch created several variations on this theme with different figures in the front right and versions of the two strolling gentlemen, sometimes looking over the edge.

 The 1895 pastel version (image to the right) sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2012 for $119,922,500. That set a new world record as the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction at that time. Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi currently holds the record for the most expensive artwork. It fetched $450.3 million at Christie's in New York in 2017. Neither artist saw a dime of that cash. 

The impacts of fossil fuel combustion were still a matter of conjecture in the 1890s, when 'The Scream of Nature' was becoming famous. Coal was big! The automobile and the discovery of vast reserves of "liquid gold" or "Texas Tea" were in the future with the Age of Oil. Francis Molina’s article Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future would not be published in New York’s Popular Mechanics until 1912.

Just a century later (not a few, as hoped for in Popular Mechanics), the Earth is in the verification stages of those dire forecasts. The corporate media has utterly failed to tell the story of what it means to release 14 million years of sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere in less than 200 years. Severe impacts are being observed daily. Informed citizens are challenging leaders to take drastic action. 

My goals are not so lofty. My painting will probably go unnoticed and is unlikely to have the impact of Munch's 'The Scream of Nature'.  I just wanted to put those smoky skies within the context of the Jim Day Swimming Hole. We frequent those classic red chairs when the atmosphere is not so full of smoke and those small yet hazardous particulates. The PM2.5 micron particles produced by combustion are 30 times smaller than a human hair! Those particles penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing inflammation. Not good...

The story behind those smoky skies can also be found in #3032 "Killbear Lighthouse Smoky Sunrise" as well as several of my science blogs. The air quality in Toronto was the worst on the planet in July as a result of wildfires. Distant, catastrophic events can still have very local impacts. We are all in this together with nature. 

As a meteorologist, I have been appalled since very early in my career by the lack of political leadership. Politicians and corporate leaders have failed miserably to address the largest, existential issue that threatens all life on Earth. Even worse, political leaders have undermined research on climate change and the scientists involved in developing and disseminating those facts. Multiple "program reviews" and funding cuts to environmental services were the norm in Canada throughout my career. 

All of humanity should be screaming at the abuses of nature and the planet by the powerful, wealthy and well-connected few - simple, arrogant, ignorant greed at the expense of the "little blue planet". The following graphic summarizes the truth of this science...

A strong case can be made that the Canadian political war on science (the search for understanding and the truth) started even before the early 1980s, back to the sixties and the Avro Arrow. Canadian science was leading the world in many fields in the early 1960s, including meteorology. 

Somehow, that knowledge conflicted with the political view of Canada as a global energy superpower. The brand of the political party was irrelevant, as they all lusted for power and wealth. Fossil fuels had to be subsidized and rebranded as "energy", thus disguising their existential links to carbon. That conception continues to this day with escalating political sanctioning (support) of oil, gas, fracking, pipelines ... a very long and misguided list of so-called "nation-building" projects that includes the high-speed rail project, Alto. Shame.

Instead, political leaders should be sanctioning (punishing) those who continue to destroy the environment for personal profit. That too is a very long list. Clear-cutting forests, including ancient, old-growth ecosystems, at a time when carbon needs to be resequestered is just wrong as well as incredibly stupid. 

Ignorance is not bliss... please be informed. 

The colours are real, but being beyond human experience, like "The Scream of Nature", some may find them challenging to believe. I wanted the heat to shimmer in both the sky and the reflective waters. The science is clear, while the politics are murky at best.

The other story behind this composition is that climate change has created two empty chairs at sunset in the natural Singleton paradise… due to heat and the PM2.5 particulates. There will be millions of permanently empty chairs in 50 years... billions by 2100. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

3036 "Eastern Towhee Thicket"

3036 "Eastern Towhee Thicket"
10 X 12 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 10:30 am Friday, August 7th, 2026

My friend John Verburg provided an inspiring image of this Eastern Towhee. We enjoy quite a few of them at Singleton. 

Many details of the Eastern Towhee's natural history still remain poorly known. The towhee spends much of its time near or on the ground in dense habitats. Tough places for humans to watch them!

Socially, it is monogamous and territorial. The female builds the nest and incubates the eggs, but both parents provide care and mob any predators. Like most of its sparrow and bunting relatives, the Eastern Towhee uses a distinctive two-footed scratching, moon-walking dance to displace loose litter on the ground and uncover hidden prey. This behaviour is especially important in winter, when nearly all of its food comes from the ground. During the breeding season, it also hunts for insects and fruit in woody vegetation above ground. 

I find the eyes on the towhee to be a challenge. They are large and located ever so slightly differently from other birds. This is another attempt to get it right!

My parents and grandparents made sure that we had access to field guides. As a kid, I spent a lot of feral time wandering the forests and pastures with the Golden Field Guides. I carried a wooden rifle that my Dad carved out of a 2 by 4 with an eye-screw as a peep sight. He even painted it. There was no fear in the woods in those days or even now.  The Birds of North America was a favourite, and I still refer to it today. 

Here are a few of the steps in trying to breathe life into this Eastern Towhee... Every painting is an interesting challenge and an opportunity to learn. 

I have painted Eastern Towhees before... please see

• #2245 "Eastern Towhee"; 
• #2950 "Eastern Towhee Sing On"; and
• #2969 "Male Towhee Sing Long" 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3035 "Indigo Blues"

 

#3035 "Indigo Blues" 
12 X 10 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 9 am on Monday, August 3rd, 2026

Indigo buntings are a favourite songbird of the Singleton Sanctuary. The small, brilliant and very colourful bird prefers brushy areas along forest edges. We have lots of those at Singleton! 

This little male indigo was quietly enjoying the sunlight. Like most other "blue coloured" birds, including the "bluebird" of happiness, the feathers of indigo buntings are not actually blue. The plumage contains the dull brown-black pigment melanin. A frontlit feather will appear bright blue as light scatters from the melanin via Rayleigh scattering. A backlit feather with the light coming from behind the feather to your eye reveals the true dark colour of the plume. 

The colours of this indigo bunting are various hues of blues. Even though the sun is not included, that fact tells us that the sun was in front of the bunting. I branded this as "Creative Scene Investigation" when I applied it to the art of Tom Thomson. Basic science can reveal a lot of truths which would not be obvious otherwise. CSI applied to art was also fun and informative when applied to the forensic cold art cases.

The large eye of the indigo bunting is striking and always a challenge to get just right. The tiniest details have to be perfect to allow the bird to really see. 

Here are a few of the steps in putting this indigo bunting together... 

Different lighting over the course of a week can really influence the hues of the painting photos.

I have painted Indigo Buntings before... #1188 "Indigo", #2922 "Blue Bunting of Happiness"; #2947 "Indigo Bunting Singing A Love Song"; and this one, #3035 "Indigo Blues" 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3033 "Loon Run Way"

#3033 "Loon Run Way"
18 X 24 (inches) oils on canvas.
Started 9 am Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. 

#3033 "Loon Run Way" 18 X 24 (inches) oils on canvas. Started 9 am Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. 

This image was taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. John has a very long lens and captures images of nature that are truly inspirational. John's photographs entice me to paint within the Singleton Studio when conditions outside are not conducive to plein air. It was torrential rain outside when I started this painting ...

John captured a familiar yet unfamiliar sight of a loon slapping its feet and racing across the water, flapping its wings to gain enough airspeed for lift-off. The details of movement and the spray of water are something we only witness as a blur. John's camera reveals details that can typically only be imagined. His image would allow the interpretation into oils. 

At the Studio Easel my Dad built.

Loons have heavy, solid bones and legs placed far back on their bodies. Those are not design flaws! Given a choice of air, land or sea, the loon picked water. Loons were built to "fly" in the water. Getting into the air takes a lot of effort. A loon on land is trapped, unable to take off and barely capable of stumbling along. 

A loon needs a water runway of 90 to 1,300 feet (up to 0.4 km) and, on average, 30 seconds of strenuous effort to get their heavy body airborne. A strong headwind will shorten the required distance. In contrast, a tailwind stretches the runway to the quarter-mile maximum. Imagine running a quarter mile across a water surface and not achieving the air speed required for lift-off. Any loon who has done that would be exhausted and probably wait for a headwind. 

Thankfully, loons are not crazy in spite of that common misconception and the song by John Prine. Loons must instinctively read atmospheric conditions. As a result, most takeoffs require a sprint of about 200 to 600 feet across open water.

The bottom line is that loons need an air speed of roughly 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) for lift-off. That might be achieved by just strolling across the water with a near-vertical takeoff into a 25 mph headwind. A running speed of 25 mph is pretty fast! In this painting, those loony legs were really flailing! 

Consider that a typical adult jogs at about 6 mph (10 km/h), while a fit recreational runner sustains 8 mph (13 km/h). Runners can do short sprints reaching 20 mph (32 km/h). This is another reason to be very impressed by these crazy, athletic birds. 

Of course, lift-off is not just achieved by running! The wings provide some lift at lower air speeds, raising the loons above the water's resistance. The propulsion provided by the wildly spinning legs is then just required to incrementally add to their forward motion. The splashes from the webbed feet on the water's surface grow further apart. Wings take over the effort of getting airborne, and the loon flies! 

During migration, loons reach maximum flight speeds of  80 mph (almost 130 km/h) and fly nonstop for 9 or 10 hours. Loons average 250 wing beats per minute flying at altitudes of  3,000 to 5,000 feet (about 1 km).

A single flight covering 1000 km would place the Singleton loons in the salty waters of Chesapeake Bay or off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

I can imagine a smile on the loon's beak every time it transitions from a graceful, synchronized swimmer to a speedy flier, having overcome the gravity of the situation. 

Interesting Facts:

• The loon swallows most of its prey underwater. The loon has sharp, rearward-pointing projections on the roof of its mouth and tongue that keep a firm hold on fish.
• Loons' legs are placed far back on their bodies, allowing efficient swimming but only awkward movement on land. Loons only go ashore to mate and incubate eggs. 
• Loons are agile swimmers, but they move pretty fast in the air, too. Migrating loons can fly at more than 70 mph.
• A loon family eat a lot of fish. Biologists estimate that loon parents and their 2 chicks can eat about a half-ton of fish over 15 weeks - the typical duration of their time together.
• Loons can quickly blow air out of their lungs and flatten their feathers to expel air within their plumage, so they can dive quickly and swim fast underwater. Once below the surface, the loon’s heart slows down to conserve oxygen.
• Migrating loons occasionally land on wet highways or parking lots, mistaking them for rivers and lakes. They become stranded without a considerable amount of open water for a long takeoff. A loon may also get stranded on a pond that is too small.
• The loon is flightless for a few weeks after moulting all of its wing feathers at the same time in midwinter.
• Juvenile loons are on their own when their parents leave after 3 months of nurturing. The juveniles gather into flocks on northern lakes and make their own journey south a few weeks later. Once the juveniles reach coastal waters on the ocean, they stay there for the next two years. In the third year, young loons return north. On average, loons are six years old when they start breeding.
• The oldest recorded loon was a female, and at least 29 years and 10 months old when she was spotted in Michigan in 2016 and identified by her band. 

I was reminded of the efforts of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), a wealthy and meticulous French academic painter who was famous for detailed paintings of Napoleon and military sieges. Meissonier was also obsessed with capturing the exact mechanics of equine movement. Meissonier built a private trolley track on his estate. He placed a cart or rolling sofa on the rails and had servants pull him at the same speed as a horse galloping parallel to him. This allowed Meissonier to sketch the legs in motion from a steady perspective. He tried but never got it right. 

Eadweard Muybridge developed high-speed stop-action photography in 1877 with a fast shutter to capture a single horse in motion. In 1881, Muybridge visited Paris and projected his famous high-speed sequential photos of a galloping horse (Sallie Gardner at a Gallop) inside Meissonier's home. 

Previously, Meissonier had painted "flying horses" with all four outstretched legs off the ground at the same time. One of his depictions is in the upper left of the above graphic. 

Meissonier apparently wept with a mix of astonishment and disappointment upon seeing the photographic proof that a horse actually bunches its hooves under its belly when all four feet leave the ground. His lifelong, highly engineered observations had missed the truth. He immediately began adjusting his subsequent masterworks to match reality. A genius can learn from science and turn it into art. But I digress...

Here are just a few of the steps in achieving loon lift-off in the Singleton Studio... 

I have painted loons before. 

• See #1368 "Loon Lunch",
• , #1369 "Singleton Loon", 
• #2739 "Loons Next Generation", 
• #2862 "Pensive Loon"  and 
• #2863 "Post-preening Loon".  

Others without loon in the title might still be in the portfolio. For example, #0158 "Bass Lake, Restoule" (lower right painting) features a pair of loons from a canoe trip. 

Loon photography courtesy of my friend, John Verburg

Loons are a favourite bird. Their haunting yodels provide our summer soundtrack. We have maintained a loon nesting platform at Singleton since 2006, continuing the remarkable efforts of my friend Jimmy J. I hope there is someone to follow in our conservation footsteps when we can no longer continue. I need the tractor to launch the very heavy, white cedar log loon platform. We are all part of nature and need to assist one another. 

For this and much more art, click on Fine Art America or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick