On the beach today, early.

The sweep of light across the sky from two light-houses. Rhythmic.

The morning star so bright its light burns through cloud.

Reflected starlight on the dark beach.

The curlew call and falling stars. One calls to praise the coming of the light, the other falls to praise the passing of the dark.

The curlews, single voiced at first then a chorus of lilting song, so close in the twilight of dawn.

Things I have seen today.

 1. Ice on the beach again, though softened and textured by sand blown across, by water running beneath.
2. Lapwings, in flight and at rest.
3. A ragged buzzard.
4. Lights on the water, abstract, bright.
5. Sand running too fast through the timer.
6. A young heron hunting at the mill stream, patient, nervous.

For the third year running Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights have chosen my book as one of their '12 Reading Days of Christmas' books. Unlike the "Books for giving" catalogue in many bookshops all the books in Mr B's are chosen simply because the staff in the book shop love them. Beware. You can look at the list online, you can get them to post a catalogue, but it will cost you money! Not because you have to pay for the list, but because the choice is just so seductive!

Birds

In the summer the tree hangs heavy with honeysuckle, in the winter, birds. Today, sparrows, bluetits, greatits, starlings, speckled bright, blackbirds, beaks dipped in bright gold, chaffinch, greenfinch, rook, jackdaw and magpie, pied wagtails, dunnock, robins. And outside on the bright privet a glorious bullfinch.

They come not long after dawn and all day the garden is busy with wings. An hour before the light fades, but after the sun has gone down they settle into warm places to wait until the coming of the new light again.

Walking up the hill I could hear lapwings call and small snipe in the bracken.

It has been a day of birds.

On the beach this morning.

A curlew, lone and calling across the sea.
Sand patterns drawn by the water.
Sun splintered light, fractured by wind and wave.
A pied oystercatcher with a clown bright beak.
Mirror water showing the sky her beautiful face.

Feathers

This is the time of the year for flocks. Yesterday I watched a great gathering, a charm of at least 100 goldfinch. There are chaffinch and whirling starlings like smoke. Bell voiced linnets thread the sky like musical notes. No greenfinches yet, and in the time of have lived here the yellowhammers have gone. Jackdaws and rooks gather in raucous murders. Sparrows are loud and bluetits group as at night they cuddle in warm places, holes in walls, sometimes in hundreds, small balls of bird dreams keeping out the cold.
Soon there will be fieldfare and redwing and curlews calling and lapwings.
Then it will be winter.

Gilding birds

Waiting for cover image with type to arrive from Frances Lincoln and getting on with work. Finishing off two barn owl paintings that I had hoped to gild at Art in Action. Too many people wanted books signed so work was much slower than last year, but it is steady, peaceful work that gives me time to think, and I need that.

 

 

Also working on a woodcock painting that is painted with a brush made from the pin feather of a woodcock. Contemplative, meditative work.

First pup of the summer.

Summer. Meadowsweet, rosebay willow herb, honeysuckle, heather, golden grass, scabious, tormentil, clover, butterflies and stonechats. And on the pebble beach over the hill, the first seal pup of the year, at least a week old, snoozing by the slow lapping sheltered sea while its mum hangs sleepy in cool water.

At the Gessail we sit for a while to watch for porpoise. Three bright gannets move across, fast flight, not hunting. Then a school of porpoise move across, breaking the surface with fins shining. They are moving through towards St Davids Head, hunting for fish. And on the water three young cormorants.

 

 

List 8.

On the beach today:

The fragile bones of broken sea birds.

The texture of stippled sand where rain had fallen, smoothed by the incoming tide.

The bones of a great tree washed up by the power of the sea, stranded on stones, smoothed by waves.

And plastic, always plastic; small beads, pots, gloves, splinters and brittle shards in unnatural colours, ropes and crates, pieces of buckets, lighters, lids, balls, all manner of discard.

Back home, there are cats and angels in my window.

 

 

On the beach today

The unfledged feathers of a mythical trickster.

Perfect waves.

The mournful keening of a solitary sea bird.

 

Monday

 

Swan Lovers. For sale through The House of Golden Dreams

Woke to see, in the west, the waning moon caught in the winter branches of a hazel tree, in the east a lemon sun rising into clear blue.

 

Drawing of hare, Demonstration at Solva Art Group.

Birds of a feather 2

Yesterday I watched as a geat white swan flew low across the winter landscape in early morning light. Blue sky, gold moor, white wings. They say that swans carry the souls of the dead to heaven. I hope so.

Birds of a feather

Yesterday we walked together over the hill, Robin, four dogs and me. The land is clothed in winter colours and as we walked through the rattling bones of heather flowers small snipe rose up with shouts and flew fast and low for safety. And then we saw a woodcock. Bigger than a snipe with a beadlike eye, coloured so like the moorland they blend so well and sit tight and still almost until you stand on them. Then they fly so fast.

Today I was supposed to meet Daf on the beach to pick up pin feathers from a woodcock he had shot, plucked and put in a pie, but had a strange assignation outside the surf shop instead as chaos had ensued at home and I was late. A small package exchanged hands and I went home happy with my feathers. I had heard that calligraphers had worked for centuries with brushes made from the pin feathers of woodcocks. They were supposed to be hard wearing and capable of producing very finely detailed work.

 

I painted a eulogy to a woodcock, so wrapped in my work that I forgot to go and pick up the kids from school, watching the paint leave the brush feather, amazed at how fine a detail I could get. I have always loved medieval painting and it was good to feel close to this ancient tradition of illustration. It seems that these feathers have been used for many things, including painting gold detail onto Rolls Royce cars. The only thing I used another brush for was the block detail covering behing the gold leaf, for the feather brush would work as a good wash brush for smaller areas too, very fine.

 

 

I am told that the birds have a wonderful flavor. I love to see them fly though, love the way they hide. They have an air of the ancient about them, a subtle magic.

detail from a medieval manuscript showing a woodcock.

Looking on the web for more about the feathers I found another painter who loves to use them, Colin Woolf.

Back to work on The Ice Bear tomorrow.