A friend of mine asked me, "what do you have after a week-long painting workshop? Did you come back with paintings?" I laughed. "No, no new paintings, just lots of fundamentals and practice."
Getting familiar with the paints, the combining of colors to create rich neutrals, how much water and how much pigment, how the water and pigment move together on the paper, which brushes give what effect—these are the fundamentals of painting. 
And since I had not painted for over a year, it is these fundamentals that I revisited. They weren’t in my back pocket anymore. I had to reconnect with them. It was a happy reunion.
Painting is much the same as playing basketball or learning photography or writing practice. You follow your passion and you practice. Through practice you develop skill, familiarity, confidence. You load your brain with the fundamentals. 
Then when you want to paint, these fundamentals are right there in your brain’s library. You focus on your subject and the rest flows. This is the essence of talent—a loaded library. 
I practiced trees, lots of trees.
Practice wets the appetite. It made me eager to paint more trees.
When you are playing with paint, reacquainting yourself with the pigments and water and how they interact, you are simultaneously looking more deeply into the subjects you paint. The shapes of twigs, the bark of a tree, the angle of limbs, the shadows and the light, how things look far away or close in, and you begin to see everything around you with renewed depth.
This is one of the many benefits of creative practice. It is not about the end result, though the result can be a reminder of who you were in that moment. But more importantly, it’s what is gained, what creating gives you, how it deepens your experience, your seeing and your awareness. 
So, I’m treating myself to a week with 
Within 30 minutes, he accomplished his first flight and was out of sight of viewers who waited a short distance away. The day prior to his release, he was fitted with leg bands which will aid in future identification and with a tail-mounted radio transmitter for tracking.
A fledged peregrine falcon remains with his parents for as long as two months, while he learns to hunt. High speed flyers, peregrines primarily feed on birds that they catch in flight or from a perch. But both the strategy and precision of this hunt must be learned.
The radio transmitter allows Dale and John Stokes to monitor Rocky’s progress for the next few weeks so they can assist if something goes wrong. Dale and John obtained Rocky from a falconer in Minnesota for a fee of $600 in order to release him in a process called hacking. The hacking box (see previous post) serves as an artificial nest and fledging home. Raptors are known to imprint on their fledging area and will generally return to that area when it is time to nest and raise their own young. 
Peregrines nest on high bluffs and it is hoped that after adolescent wandering for the next two years, Rocky will return to nest in the Lookout Mountain area.
It was falconers like Dale and John Stokes who alerted the world to the effects of DDT on our raptors and subsequently saved many species from extinction. Peregrine falcon populations plummeted from 1950 to 1970 due to DDT poisoning, but the hacking re-introductions that began in 1970 have restored species numbers. Peregrines were removed from the national endangered list in 1999 but remain on the state endangered list in Georgia and TN.
This is Rocky, a young male peregrine falcon, released this morning on the bluffs of Rock City, near Chattanooga, TN. The door to his hacking box, high on Lookout Mountain, was covered with a sheet and opened before dawn today. The sheet, carefully drawn open as daylight emerged, allows a gentle release so that the falcon can consider his freedom and his first attempts to fly. John and Dale then quietly await his fledging and monitor with telemetry.
Here Dale and John remove Rocky from his hacking box to secure leg bands and telemetry the day before release. More about Rocky and his stewards next post.
Respect for tradition and the spiritual nature of the ceremony required that no
I opened a small umbrella, anticipating a sudden down pour as the cloud moved overhead. But no sooner had I opened it, than the gusting wind flipped it inside out. As I struggled against the wind to correct this, I looked at the boys who were now staring at me, and muttered something silly like, “a lot of help this umbrella is.” The older boy laughed and turned to his brother to interpret. The younger child collapsed into contagious giggles and the three of us giggled together while the wind blew rain in our faces. Watching from a distance, their father laughed, too. 
The Inn on the Santa Fe trail is located in Las Vegas, NM, an area of high desert at the foothills of the Sangre de Criso Mountains. Below, an old wagon on display in the central courtyard at the Inn. 
The Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge was located near by, a plateau where the Sangre de Cristo mountains meet the Great Plains. Here I saw prairie falcons, red-tailed hawks, ravens, yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds and western kingbirds along with many prairie grasses and wildflowers. 
Below, a larger view of prairie marsh with bull thistles in the foreground. I must say that the prairie grasses here were unexpectedly beautiful, a sea of blue-green waving pale yellow seed heads in the breeze.
At home in prairies and open areas, I was first introduced to the western kingbird while st
Given that golden eagles prey on birds occasionally, especially the inexperienced or injured, this peaceful co-habitation seemed unlikely, but the area biologist said it is a fairly common occurrence.
But I can say that a deeper look, pulls at the heart strings. It's enough to wonder if The King will survive his daily challenges, as well as a long migration to Central or South America. I hope so. There will be lots of hardy genes passed on to the next generation.
But the fledglings are another heart-string matter. Their survival depends on their ability to quickly learn the skills of maneuvering to catch insects and navigate nectar sources while escaping combat. 
This little soul tugged at my heart this morning. A beauty in the making, it's clear life has not been easy thus far.
He still salutes me at the feeder with a blur.
As the smallest bird in the world, it makes sense that hummingbird personalities would be fired with spirit and tenacity. Watching migrant visitors line the tree limbs around the feeder in plain sight and the King executing his precision U-shaped dives despite being sorely out-numbered, I am in awe of his heart and perseverence. He leaves no doubt--he is The King.
But on chance occasions, when he is otherwise occupied, a visitor gets to linger at the feeder, and when this happens, some amusing antics emerge in this serious business of hummingbird feeding.
Above, after a lingering drink during which he sipped from each blossom, this visitor perched facing the glass as if to conceal himself..."Shhhh! I'm invisible."
But not for long. The King on his perch, looking very kingly.
The atmosphere around the feeder is changing, quietly, barely discernable, but the King is not so vigilant or aggressive. I see him at his perch and he does exert his dominance but not with the same kind of fury. 
Visitors get to feed longer. Juveniles and females can sneak in for a drink while the males are displaying and circling, sometimes three at once. I even saw one juvenile duck under the limb of a holly to avoid detection. It didn’t work.
In his book, The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Robert Sargent says hummingbirds have very keen eye-sight and hearing and the buzz of wings agitates the male into action. 
