Far Flung Sketchers

This week found only two of us to sketch together at Southern Vermont Natural History Museum at Hogback Mountain on RT9. We had so much fun we hardly missed our friend who is in Italy for three weeks, and another who is cruising on the Danube, and a third who could not leave home for fear of missing the internet repairman's call. Such is life... ups and downs, isn't it. 

There are many stuffed creatures in display cases at the museum; collected at a time when that was fashionable, even legal. The live birds are there for educational purposes because they are unable to live in the wild. The bald eagle was hit by a truck in Wyoming and subsequently guarded by the truck driver until the wildlife rehabilitator could get there. The kestrel had been hand-raised by a human and preferred visitors to her "mate". I picked the saw-whet owl to sketch because she was just about the cutest thing I ever saw. She was trying to sleep in the darkest corner of her large, woodsy cage. So I missed a few fascinating details, I'm sure. It was a special hour spent face to face with her. She had a calm attitude and knew she was cool.

My friend and I were pleasantly distracted from our sketching by the assistant director who was training and feeding the birds and there were many things to learn from him.