The common egrets showed up in numbers this morning at our marsh. We haven't had many so far this year. The occasional white shape shows up across the wetland. But today there were seven. One of them flew over carrying a stick, likely back to the rookery about four miles west of us in a forest preserve on Main Street near Route 47. Fifty years ago when I started birding, egrets were not common. Finding one each spring or summer was a thrill. I recall sneaking up for fifty yards at the north end of Nelson Lake Marsh to get a fuzzy picture with my Pentax and a 50-300MM lens. I'd have surely loved the Canon and Sigma camera equipment I own today. It would have been life-changing having the ability to get great reference photography of my own on which to base my paintings. To do paintings back then, I pored through bird books assembling angles and knowledge to the best of my ability. Most of my painted images were strained attempts to capture what I'd seen in the wild. Lacking a photographic memory, I drew countless sketches in my drawing pads trying to work out the anatomy, which I often averaged out so that the birds never looked quite right. Yet I have no ragrats. I mean, no regrets. I did the best I could with the resources I had. No ragrats at al. But I sure love seeing more egrets these days.

This morning while walking the dogs, I looked at the marsh and saw the most angelic bird possible in flight. It was a Forster's tern, a species that I adore for its elegance and coloration. The white wingtips are unique among terns, with only one or two other species having markings of this kind. This time of year, Forster's terns are likely done breeding and a few might wander off as post-breeding birds often do. I don't have any photos, either iPhone or Canon, to show the tern I saw this morning, so I've done a couple screen caps from the Sibley app. Look at the map. Forster's do breed in our area, but also way up into the southern Canadian provinces. It says they nest on "marshy islands." Along with their thrilling color scheme, I've seen Forster's in the most beautiful situations. Once I was out running on a favorite rural route north of Decorah, Iowa. I was crossing an old suspension over the Upper Iowa, which is a national and scenic wild river, and a pair of Forster's was lilting upstream, their white wings flashing over rippling waters. This is why I love birding. Right here. You never know what kinds of encounters you'll have once you take up the pursuit whether casual or concerted.

The marsh wren is one of my favorite birds of summer. Their song sounds like an 'old sewing machine' to some, and a lawnmower that won't start to others. They sing on warm summer days, fetching around among the cattails where they make incredible nests of that look like baskets with holes in them. I have not found the nest of this pair yet, and I likely won't bother them. I want them to have success because this is the second year they've shown up after the path reconstruction and wetland expansion led to a new line of marsh habitat just to their liking. These birds make me happy because they remind me of finding them the first time when I was a teenage birder. Their song takes me back fifty years. I've only painted them once for a client, but these photos may lead to a new work in acrylic or some other media. Happy birding all.

Here are two coloring sheets created from my bald eagle painting. You can print out the "simple" or the "detailed" coloring sheet version and use colored pencil or even regular pencils to shade in the eagle. I'd love to see your work! #eagle #artofbirding #birder #coloring

In 1971, when I began birding and specifically, painting birds, the bald eagle was a rare and endangered bird species in the United States. Audubon magazine published a photo set of eagles in Florida by a famous photographer, and looking at those images back then while reading about the devastating effects of DDT on raptor egg shells in peregrine falcons and ospreys, it felt like I'd never see any of those species in real life. Fortunately, the 70s became an era of environmental activism, and both political parties joined in. President Nixon signed the and Clean Air (1970) and Clean Water (1972) acts, and the Endangered Species act in 1973. These acts, along with the ban on DDT in 1972 represented America's commitment to protecting not just endangered species, but millions of other life forms. Wetlands conservation also provided important protection for eagle habitat. However, political conservatives in the Trump administration recently moved to degrade wetland protections by "redefining" what constitutes protected wetlands. This degradation is in response to the political activism of the US Supreme Court in the Sackett v. EPA, who ruled that a couple in Idaho backfilling on their property had the right to do what they want because the "The CWA’s (Clean Water Act) use of “waters” in §1362(7) refers only to “geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes’ ” and to adjacent wetlands that are “indistinguishable” from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection." This is an utterly ignorant description of what wetlands are, how they were formed, and what they do for clean water and conservation. For example, it specifically ignored wetlands formed by glaciers 10,000 years ago that are not specifically connected to any "stream, ocean, river, or lakes." The Supreme Court ruled in willful ignorance of this fact.