#2952 "Apple Blossom Bumble"

#2952 "Apple Blossom Bumble" 
16 x 20 by 3/4 depth stretched canvas (inches)
Started 9:30 am Monday, June 9th, 2025

"No mow May" is standard practice in the Singleton Sanctuary. That first crop of flowers is vital for all of nature. The trees are among the first to produce blossoms - in this case, an apple tree. There are some very old apple trees on the property. They need much more care than I have time to give. This photographic inspiration was taken by my friend John Verburg. 

The American Bumblebee is an important pollinator of native plant species. Bumblebees typically fly during inclement weather conditions, while other insects stay home. The Bumblebee is considered one of the most determined nest-defending bumblebee species, likely because it nests at or above ground. Bumblebees generally visit flowers up to 2 km from their colony. They tend to visit the same patches of flowers every day, making only enough honey to satisfy their needs. Luckily, we see them in abundance every day. 

American Bumblebee queens spend the winter underground, employing decomposing organic material like rotting logs and compost. 

The American Bumblebee is threatened due to:

• pesticide use 
• habitat loss due to agricultural intensification
• pathogens spillover from domestic bees 
• American Bumblebee might have a low genetic diversity, possibly contributing to its decline, while increasing the production of sterile male individuals

Southern Ontario is the northern edge of the American Bumblebee's distribution. Sadly, the American Bumblebee was added to the Species at Risk in Ontario List on January 25, 2023. 

Human conceit encourages the false belief that we know it all. Nature employs not just temperature but also sunlight, gravity, magnetic fields and even quantum effects to manage daily, seasonal and annual activities. We can't possibly fully understand nature, which is tremendously complex and interconnected. 

Uneven global warming has created temperature variations that are out of step with solar radiation. Fragile interconnections between symbiotic species that took thousands of years to tune have been broken seemingly overnight. Insect populations appear to be crashing... 

For example, the blossoms of the apple tree are triggered by a combination of factors: temperature, light, hormones, nutrients and water. Temperature is a strong factor influencing bumblebee foraging. The bumblebees become inactive at both very low and very high temperatures. 

The weather is also changing and driving bigger modifications in the climate. Earth is in the initial stages of verifying the 1970s calamities predicted by the continued exploitation of fossil fuels. We are now just witnessing the tip of the melting iceberg, fueled by greed and the lust for power.

Bumblebees remain safe with the Singleton Sanctuary. Humans seem to think that they have all the answers when they don't even know a fraction of the questions. This encourages a toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance that has resulted in decades of dithering and inaction. Open minds, fresh thinking and wisdom are urgently required to come to the rescue of all species on the planet. May I kindly recommend any book by Diana Beresford-Kroeger. 

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 

#2951 "Smokey Monet Sunrise"

#2951 "Smokey Monet Sunrise" 
10 x 12 by 1/2 depth MDF panel (inches)
Started 9:00 am Sunday, June 8th, 2025

The barred owls actually woke me up before dawn. Multiple owls were carrying on quite a conversation. I eavesdropped in... even though I do not know "owl", I do give a hoot. 

The sun was just cresting above the Singleton forest. Crows were alerting the rest of nature about my movements around the home. A trumpeter swan flew low overhead and bugled a greeting. Bluebirds were starting their day of feeding their chicks. One Bluebird had already fledged out and was waiting for breakfast on a branch of the Shagbark Hickory. The Eastern phoebes were also busy. It was an idyllic start to a day, but the sky told the story of tragedy. 

I also needed a break from painting bird portraits. I decided to record the colour of the sun as seen through the smoke encircling the northern hemisphere. The Smoke Advisory had been officially ended, but it still influenced the colour of the sunrise. This view looks east at 5:52 am Sunday, June 8th, 2025. Perhaps the smoke was getting too much media coverage. Maybe it would go away if everyone stopped talking about it? 

Climate change has forever altered the Boreal forest. A carbon sink has been transformed into a big source. A combination of drought and insect infestations has transformed the coniferous trees into matchsticks loaded with flammable resins. A warming atmosphere is also hungry for more water vapour, further parching the landscape. The Boreal Forest Fire season used to run from April to October, but now it never stops. "Zombie fires" smoulder all winter, waiting for spring to begin anew. 

John Vaillant's fine book "Fire Weather" is actually a textbook on the science and sociological aspects of climate change disguised as an action tale about the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. As I wrote in 2024, please read Chapter 20. Those pages summarize a couple of centuries of science and explain a crucial five lost decades of action due to corporate greed and political pandering for power and profit. "Fire Weather" is an important and factual read... worth reading twice or even three times. 

The year 2023, when "Fire Weather"  was first published, also set records for fires within the Boreal Forest. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) monitors the locations and intensity of fires. CAMS also tracks emissions and forecasts the impacts of the resulting smoke on the atmosphere. The following graphs summarize the sad story of 2023. 

Sadly, the carbon emissions from 2025 are on track to at least match those of 2023. The following are some images of Canadian smoke around the world... there were too many to include. 

But now back to art...

Much has been written about "Impression, Sunrise" painted by Claude Monet in 1872. Most missed the point in the early days of coal and mankind opening Pandora's Box of carbon. That same sun can be witnessed in 2025 through the smoke generated from torching the Boreal Forest. Monet claimed that he hastily titled the painting due to his hazy painting style. 

"They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn't really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: 'Put Impression.'" Claude Monet 1872

In terms of "economic value", the painting was initially bought in 1874 for 800 francs and sold again in 1877 for a loss at a mere 210 francs. The value of 210 francs in France in 1880 equates to about $2000 USD in 2025. Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" is now estimated to be worth $250-350 million USD, but it will never come on the market... 

The term "Impressionism" had already been used for some time to describe the effect of paintings from the Barbizon School. The details of all of those facts will left for the art historians. I will focus on the science. 

The influence of smoke and fog on the scattering of light is distinctive. "Smog" is defined as a fog made heavier and darker by smoke and chemical fumes. The term was first used at a 1905 Congress when Dr. H. A. des Vœux, hon. treasurer of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society read a paper on 'Fog and Smoke'. 

"He said it required no science to see that there was something produced in great cities which was not found in the country, and that was smoky fog, or what was known as 'smog'."

These thoughts were all bouncing around in my mind while I painted, but they are secondary. The only thing I can do is try to remain positive and happy. It is easy to be perpetually angry, witnessing what greed and the human economy have done to Paradise Earth. Nature is not part of the equation or the artificial balance sheet of wealth. Simply, nature has no voice.

I also thought that "Monet" sounded a bit like "morning" so the title makes some sense for a sunrise painting. "Monet" also sounds like "money" but for me, art has nothing to do with the contrived, unnatural currency of the human economy. 

So I stay home, paint and look after the forests while surrounded by nature. Life remains good if I focus on the positive.

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 

#2950 "Eastern Towhee Sing On"

#2950 "Eastern Towhee Sing On" 

20 X 16 inches by 3/4 profile in depth.

Started at 9:00 am Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

I start all of these bird portraits with the eyes and the beak. It is essential to get these perfect; otherwise, the painting will fail. Sometimes it comes with the first brush stroke. Sometimes it is a job requiring several visits. 

The Towhee is a strikingly marked, oversized sparrow of the East, feathered in bold black and warm reddish-browns. It is heard far more than it is seen. The Eastern Towhees spend their time rummaging in the undergrowth. They scratch at leaves using both feet at the same time, in a kind of backwards hop while making a lot of noise. The Eastern Towhee is mainly seen when it climbs into low trees to sing, like this one. 

Towhees eat many foods: seeds, fruits, insects, spiders, millipedes, centipedes, and snails, as well as soft leaf and flower buds in spring. They also eat seeds and fruits, including ragweeds, smartweeds, grasses, acorns, blackberries, blueberries, wheat, corn, and oats. 

Eastern Towhees usually nest on the ground, the nest cup sunk into the fallen leaves up to the level of the rim. Sometimes the nests are constructed in shrubs or grape, honeysuckle, or greenbrier tangles, up to about 4 feet off the ground. 

The Eastern Towhee and the similar Spotted Towhee of western North America used to be considered the same species, the Rufous-sided Towhee. The two forms still occur together in the Great Plains, where they sometimes interbreed. This is a common evolutionary pattern in North American birds – a holdover from when the great ice sheets split the continent down the middle, isolating birds into eastern and western populations that eventually became new species.

Eastern Towhees are common victims of the parasitic Brown-headed Cowbird. Female cowbirds lay eggs in towhee nests, then leave the birds to raise their cowbird young. In some areas, cowbirds lay eggs in more than half of all towhee nests. Towhees, unlike some other birds, show no ability to recognize or remove the impostor’s eggs. Female cowbirds typically take out a towhee egg when laying their own, making the swap still harder to notice.

Eastern Towhees tend to be solitary, using threat displays to tell other towhees to back off. Studies have shown that male towhees tend to defend territories many times larger than needed simply to provide food.

The oldest known Eastern Towhee was at least 9 years old when it was recaptured and rereleased in South Carolina. It was originally banded in the same state in 1937.

Eastern Towhees are numerous and commonly seen throughout their range, but their numbers declined by an estimated 1.4% per year for a cumulative decline of about 53% between 1966 and 2019. A study by the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) in Canada showed a 47% decrease in numbers since 1970.

Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of 29 million and rates them 11 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of relatively low conservation concern. Numbers of these birds rose in the mid-twentieth century as people stopped farming and their fields returned to nature. Expansion of subdivisions made the landscape less suitable. 

"Special Concern" means the species lives in the wild in Ontario and is not endangered or threatened, but may become threatened or endangered. Special concern species do not receive any species or habitat protection. Shame. 

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 

#2949 "Wood Thrush Love Songs"

#2949 "Wood Thrush Love Songs"  
16 X 20 inches by 3/4 profile in depth.
Started at 9:30 am Friday, May 30th, 2025

My friend John Verburg started finding all kinds of singing birds to inspire me. What could be more positive? The world certainly needs more birds and their melodies. This wood thrush was putting everything into his song. 

The portrait went well from the first brush strokes on the eye and beak. The Thrush was positioned on the canvas so the song emerged from the upper right intersection of the thirds. The bird was singing in a colourful Cucumber Tree  (Magnolia acuminate), which is the only native magnolia species in Ontario.

The Wood Thrush is one of the first songsters to be heard in the morning and among the last in the evening. The male sings his haunting "ee-oh-lay" song from an exposed perch in the midstory or lower canopy. He uses the song to establish a territory that averages a few acres. 

Within days, a female initiates pairing by enticing him to chase her in silent circular low-level flights only feet above the ground. The prospective mates share a perch between flights. After pairing, the female helps defend the territory from intruders. Low-level threat gestures like breast puffing, crest raising, and wing and tail flicking are usually enough. They give a distinctive, sharp machine-gun-like sound as an alarm call. 

Wood Thrushes forage by hopping through leaf litter on the forest floor, tossing leaves to expose insects or probing for litter-dwelling prey. While foraging, they frequently bob upright for a look around. Foraging is largely solitary, though they may form mixed flocks on their wintering grounds, where they sometimes cautiously feed at the periphery of an army ant swarm. Pairs are socially monogamous, though extra-pair copulations are common. New pairs form each year.

The wood thrush lives in mature deciduous and mixed (conifer-deciduous) forests. They seek moist stands of trees with well-developed undergrowth and tall trees for singing perches. They prefer large forests, but will also use smaller stands of trees. The Singleton forest is perfect for them. 

They build their nests in living saplings, trees or shrubs, usually in sugar maple or American beech.

The wood thrush is a medium-sized songbird slightly smaller than the American robin but similar in shape. Males and females have a similar appearance. Young birds look similar to adults, but have tawny streaks and spots on the back, neck, and wings. 

The wood thrush flies south to Mexico and Central America for the winter. Twice a year, Wood Thrushes cross the Gulf of Mexico in a single night’s flight. The north-bound spring route is further west, along the Mississippi Valley. Males arrive on breeding grounds several days before females. The fall route heading southward follows the Atlantic coast.

Quick facts

• The wood thrush may nest and raise young two and occasionally even three times in the course of a single season.
• The wood thrush has a loud, flute-clear “ee-oh-lay” song. For the last of the three sounds, this bird sings pairs of notes simultaneously, one from each branch of its Y-shaped voice box.
• While many male songbirds answer a neighbour’s song with the same song, the male wood thrush will almost always answer a rival’s song with a different one.
• The brown-headed cowbird sometimes lays its eggs in the nests of wood thrushes, which then raise the young cowbirds. Brown-headed cowbirds lay eggs in the nests of more than 220 species of birds.

Major threats to the Wood Thrush are:

• loss or breaking up of the bird’s forest habitat resulting from urban, suburban and cottage development
• over-browsing by white-tailed deer in some locations decreases the number and type of plants and trees in the forest, including the number of saplings, where the wood thrush nests
• parasitic behaviour from brown-headed cowbirds, which lay their eggs in the nests of the wood thrush (and other birds), and whose young are fed by the host thrush at the expense of their own young
• loss and the breaking up of forests in the bird’s winter habitat 

"Special Concern" means the species lives in the wild in Ontario and is not endangered or threatened, but may become threatened or endangered. Special concern species do not receive any species or habitat protection. Shame. 

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 

#2948 "Yellow Warbler Friend"

#2948 "Yellow Warbler Friend" 
16 X 20 inches by 3/4 profile in depth.
Started 9:00 am Friday May 23rd, 2025

John Verburg wrote that the "pretty Male Yellow Warbler was fun and relatively easy to photograph!". The photo presented some artistic challenges, but that is another story. Yellow Warblers are very entertaining and deserve our attention. 

Singing males perch near the tops of the bushes or trees in their territory. As male Yellow Warblers are setting up territories, they may perform a "circle flight" in which they fly toward a neighbouring male or female in a horizontal, semicircular path. A male may also fly slowly with fast, exaggerated wingbeats away from a female he is courting or a male he is competing with. As these territorial encounters proceed, males start by singing at each other; as the dispute goes on, the songs get quieter or switch to chip notes as the males chase each other. Yellow Warblers typically form monogamous pairs that sometimes last more than one breeding season and reform the next. 

Yellow Warblers forage along slender branches of shrubs and small trees. They pick off insect prey as they go or may briefly hover to get at prey on leaves. Typical prey include midges, caterpillars, beetles, leafhoppers and other bugs, and wasps. 

The females need about four days of construction to build the nest. She starts with a cup of grasses, bark strips, and plants such as nettles. She then lines the outside with plant fibres, spiderwebs, and plants. The inner cup is finished with deer hair, feathers, and fibres from cottonwood, dandelion, willow, and cattail seeds. If a cowbird lays its eggs in a Yellow Warbler's nest, it often begins building a new nest directly on top of the old one, abandoning both its own eggs and the cowbird's. 

Yellow Warblers vigorously defend their nesting territories. They may even chase off other warbler species while on their wintering grounds. Common predators of Yellow Warbler nests include garter snakes, red squirrels, jays, crows, raccoons, weasels, skunks, and domestic or feral cats. 

Yellow Warblers are long-distance migrants from South America as far as Alaska. Yellow Warblers breed across central and northern North America while spending their winters in Central America and northern South America. They migrate earlier than most other warblers in both spring and fall. Like many other migrating songbirds, Yellow Warblers from eastern North America fly across the Gulf of Mexico in a single nonstop journey. Some Yellow Warblers will take a longer southbound overland route around the Gulf in autumn.  

Yellow Warblers are one of the most numerous warblers in North America, but their populations have been slowly declining by an estimated 0.4% per year for a cumulative decline of about 20% between 1966 and 2019. Like many migratory songbirds that move at night, Yellow Warblers can be attracted to and killed by collisions with tall, lighted structures such as TV towers and tall buildings.  

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