#2845 "Female Snowy Owl"

#2845 "Female Snowy Owl"
18x14 oils on stretched canvas
Started Saturday, February 17th, 2024

This female snowy owl had a whimsical, perhaps questioning expression on her feathered face. I was happy when that emotion also came through in the brush strokes. The owl would have been regarding the man with the camera in front of her and wondering what the fuss might be about. Female snowy owls might not be as showy as the almost virgin white males, but they are stunningly beautiful. That man in front of her would have been my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. John provides a tremendous source of inspiration during the winter when the windchill encourages me to stay within the Singleton Studio. John is also very respectful of nature and uses long lenses to give nature the space that it deserves. 

Snowy owls nest all across the Arctic tundra of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and Russia. One careful estimate put their total world population at only about 300,000. However, their numbers undoubtedly vary from year to year, rising and falling with changes in food supply and other factors. They probably have declined overall in the last century. 

They're native to Arctic tundra, north of treeline, so for most of the year they wouldn't even see a tree. When some of them come farther south, they seek out areas that look similar to their Arctic territory: prairies, wide-open fields and beaches.

Within a few hours after hatching, the young nestlings are covered with fluffy white down which is replaced by darker gray down within a few days. Their first set of feathers, which takes a while to grow in, is basically white, but with a variable amount of black spotting and barring.

The number of eggs that the females lay will change from year to year, depending on how much food is available. When food is scarce, they may lay only three to five eggs and sometimes none at all. When food is abundant, as in a year when lemmings are in peak numbers, they may lay seven or even more eggs. This is part of the reason why their numbers can increase so rapidly in a good season.

Since most of their breeding range is above the Arctic Circle, snowy owls are in a regime of continuous daylight in summer. Snowy owls are thus used to hunting during the continuous light of summer or the dark of winter. Wintering Snowy Owls will often sit in one spot for most of the day, starting to become active near dusk, and doing much of their hunting at dusk or just after dark.

Most owls live in the forest and are active at night, so communicating by voice is a very important part of their behaviour. Since snowy owls live in open country, and they're active in daylight during the breeding season, they have less need for far-carrying sounds. Still, they do make hoarse hooting sounds as part of their territorial defence. They also make a variety of other sounds during interactions with their own kind, including shrieks, cackling barks, mewing cries, and snapping their bills shut loudly. Lone snowy owls on the wintering grounds are often silent.

Snowy owls are protected so it is best to give them their space. 

The image is displayed on an old, large screen beside the studio easel built by my Dad. I go right to the brush. I typically start with the eyes which have to be perfect. If the eyes are not right, it would be best to stop before you go any further. The painting stays on the easel until I am satisfied... it can take a while! I am in no rush. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

2844 "Red-tailed Hawk"

#2844 "Red-tailed Hawk"
18x14 oils on stretched canvas
Started February 17th, 2024

Red-tailed Hawks are the most common hawks in Ontario. Red-tailed Hawks are opportunistic carnivores. 

The primary part of their diet is small mammals such as mice, moles, rats, squirrels, and rabbits. They favour hunting from a tall perch. The Red-tailed Hawk is not a species at risk in Ontario however they still face a range of mortal threats. 

This is another image taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. John provides a tremendous source of inspiration during the winter when the windchill encourages me to stay within the Singleton Studio.

The image is displayed on an old, large screen beside the studio easel built by my Dad and I go right to the brush. The painting stays on the easel until I am satisfied... it can take a while!

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2843 "March Bluebird"

#2843 "March Bluebird"
14x18 inches oils on stretched canvas

With climate change, the bluebirds are now year-round residents at Singleton Lake in eastern Ontario. They seem to survive on the small cones of red cedars. Bluebirds can be attracted to platform feeders, filled with grubs of the darkling beetle. These beetles are mainly sold online as mealworms. Bluebirds will also eat raisins soaked in water. Some people even use backyard heated birdbaths that winter bluebirds apparently enjoy.

We do not engage in any of these unnatural encouragements to try to persuade the birds to stay year-round. There are no mealworms or warm baths at Singleton. Severe winter storms are even more likely in the cold trough that will dominate eastern Canada for the next couple of decades. After that, the entire planet will be too warm for snow. Winter storms would probably result in many casualties within the bird population that refuses to migrate as they have for thousands of centuries. Bluebirds have been known to live for a decade so the birds that inhabit the Singleton Sanctuary know us well. I would never wish to encourage their premature demise even though I love to see and hear them...

The first-day painting at the Studio easel. Right to the brush... starting with tones.

This male bluebird had already claimed one of the most favourable Peterson Blue Bird Houses within the Singleton Sanctuary. I could see his breath condense into ice crystals as he sang. I included those wisps of song in the condensed vapours that I painted. 

It was a chilly March morning in 2021. Hoar frost covered the branches of the shagbark hickory. The frost forms first and thickest on the smaller branches. Those twigs have less heat capacity and cool to freezing faster than the larger branches. The layer of frost on the larger limbs was thin in comparison. 

Male Bluebird March 2021 

Hoar frost typically forms on calm, cool and clear nights when the air mass is moist with water vapour. The word 'hoar' comes from the old English "showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair". Apparently, the feathery ice crystals resemble the white hair or the beard of someone old. I have enjoyed white hair from my thirties so white is not necessarily old. Water vapour sublimates from gas to solid ice crystals on the twigs of the hickory. The size of the frost that forms depends on how much water vapour is available to 'feed' the ice crystals as they grow. Vapour pressure over ice has a maximum near minus 12 Celsius and I expect that was the temperature when the bluebird was singing about how happy he was to be home in the Singleton Sanctuary. 

I possess Artistic License Number 000516 and I admit to enhancing the amount of hoar frost on those shagbark hickory branches. I probably should invoke that license more than I do. However, I prefer to record what I see while keeping the brush strokes painterly in nature. As a meteorologist, I focussed on the facts since people tend to prefer realism as opposed to abstraction in their weather forecasts. Some of that tendency has bridged over into my art. Maybe I should let my hair down more!

By the way, climate change and its impacts is not a question of belief. The science has been well-known since the 1800s. The impacts have been well predicted. The tipping points can be observed. Please read John Vaillant's fine book "Fire Weather" is a textbook on the science and sociological aspects of climate change disguised as an action tale about the Fort McMurray wildfire. Be informed.

The response of Canadian politicians of all flavours to the obvious impacts of climate change was to remove the scientists and dumpster their research… forbidding them to use those words in any sentence. Deny the science, destroy the evidence and get rid of the messengers. Shame.

Nature and art still make sense though. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2842 "Northern Shrike"

#2842 "Northern Shrike"
18x14 oils on stretched canvas

This is another image taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. John provides a tremendous source of inspiration during the winter when the windchill encourages me to stay within the Singleton Studio. These striking birds are rarely seen but look for solitary and wary robin-sized birds perched at the top of a lone tree in an open field, watching for prey. 

The burly, bull-headed Northern Shrike is a pint-sized predator of birds, small mammals, and insects. A bold black mask and stout, hooked bill heighten the impression of danger in these fierce predators. They breed in far northern North America and come as far south as the northern U.S. for winter. They hunt in brushy, semiopen habitats, chasing after birds, creeping through dense brush to ambush prey, or pouncing on mice. They often save food for later by impaling it on thorns or barbed wire. 

Loggerhead Shrikes have a thicker black mask than Northern Shrikes that often extends over the eye and above the bill. They have cleaner white underparts without the fine barring of Northern Shrikes. 

There was an Environment Canada (EC) pamphlet produced during the era of "program reviews" (aka budget cuts/career losses) in the 1990s. A northern shrike was featured prominently on the cover. The EC directors probably never realized that the "butcher bird" was an editorial comment on what was transpiring within the public service. 

There was a forty-year window of opportunity to take real measures on climate change beginning in the 1970s. The threats to the environment were apparent and not just dire warnings found in 200-year-old science literature.  Sadly, the response to the climate and environmental crisis by governments and corporations became increasingly clear during my career. Maybe someone still has a copy of that pamphlet... 

In particular, the 1990s was a time of cuts at all levels of government. Just when the efforts to address climate change and unsustainable extraction should have been escalating. The window of opportunity to take meaningful steps was still open but the cuts to science and service were brutal. The superficial and ineffective deeds did not match the heroic, political rhetoric. 

Provincially, a series of"sharp" budget cuts to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in the 1990s saw the lifetime efforts of many scientists that I personally knew and called friends, simply thrown in the dumpster outside their cubicle. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3552259 

Federally, the cuts also started in the 1990s. The cuts to environmental services spoke volumes and those who were eligible to "retire early", simply left taking decades of knowledge and experience with them. Those assaults on science have never stopped. 

A March 19, 2014 article bannered as "Echoes of Walkerton in Environment Canada cuts" follows with "Health and safety of Canadians is at risk with latest slashing of Environment Canada budget." 

"Albert Einstein's well-known definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" is unsettlingly relevant to a new round of federal government cuts. The latest slashing of Environment Canada, which by 2016 will have half the budget it had in 2007, calls to mind a series of deep cuts to environmental protections in Ontario in the late 1990s. Some of the players are even the same, so they cannot reasonably claim to be ignorant of the tragic consequences.Both at the provincial and federal levels. Not much has changed." 

Chapter 20 of John Vaillant's fine book "Fire Weather" summarizes the science, corporate greed and pitiful, pandering politicians seeking profit and power. The hypocritical deeds of those in control closed the window of climate change opportunity. Vailllant's 25 pages accurately cover the back story of what I described above. 

The planet is almost a quarter of the way into the Century of Fire and the threshold of "OnePointFive-Celsius" - perhaps even achievable in 2024. Meanwhile, Canada charges full steam ahead in the Petrocene racing Russia to be recognized as the worst climate laggards within the environmental community. 

The cost of these actions is becoming painfully clear as current record-warm weather integrates into the record-warm climate. The planet is entering a whole new climate and weather world with atmospheric carbon levels that have not been seen in more than 3 million years ago, during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period. 

I was still thinking of the birds of prey and the countless other species that call this portion of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere home as I painted. There are between 1,500 and 3,000 feathers in general on small songbirds. Art can keep me very busy but there is still time to get out and see real nature every day in the Singleton Sanctuary. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick