The Art of Birds
Artists have been moved, from at least the time of the Egyptians, to capture the likeness and the magic of birds. Their colors, movements, songs, their mysterious comings and goings with the seasons, have seemed almost supernatural, sacred. The earliest ornithologists in the United States discovered the seemingly endless species of the New World and captured their beauty, traits, and surroundings through paintings, journals, and published volumes. Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon combined their scientific observations with the wonder of bird life through artistic renderings long before the advent of cameras, binoculars, telescopic lenses, film, video, or downstreaming. Woodrow Wilson’s daughters danced as birds in Percy Mackay’s play Sanctuary: A Bird Masque, to benefit the early conservationist movement; At 90, Marian McPartland, host of NPR’s popular Piano Jazz, composed a jazz symphony honoring Rachel Carson that begins with birdsong. You can hear it here. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart kept a pet starling and incorporated parts of its singing into the finale of his Piano Concerto K. 453.
Photos by Ross Feldner
Today, birds delight people from all walks of life. Whether amateurs or professionals, they seek to capture and share their love of birds through paintings and drawings, carvings and sculpture, photographs and films, music and performance. The art of birds stirs our imagination, awe, and wonder; it touches the spiritual and the sacred within us. It is why we wish to preserve and protect these marvelous beings who miraculously appear to us along a sandy beach, in a scarlet sunset, or at our windowsill.
Ross Feldner birding at Chincoteague, VA
Rachel Carson and friends on a bird walk in Glover Archibald Park, Washington, DC.
The Rachel Carson Council seeks to instill and inspire a love of birds through art. You will find here selected images and works gathered from many sources to stir your soul and move you to action. You will also find here a place to send and share your own work and that of others. Many of the photographs that grace our web site are by RCC’s Ross Feldner, a leading nature photographer and avid birder. He and fellow birder, RCC President & CEO, Bob Musil, haunt many of the places where Rachel Carson spotted and wrote about birds from the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge Center in Maryland to Washington DC’s Rock Creek Park, Glover Archibald Park, the C&O Canal, Chincoteague Island, VA and more.
RCC contributors, like birds, are found everywhere so we receive paintings, artwork, and photos from across the nation, like this painting of a cardinal in North Carolina by RCC Fellow Kendall Jefferys. Send us and let us share your perceptions, perspectives, and images of birds, in whatever medium, whether you are a beginner, an amateur, or a polished professional.
We will look out for them at [email protected] and share them as widely as possible. Let art take flight.
For the Birds: Massive Mural Sends Message About Climate Change’s Impacts The mural features birds that make their way through New York City during their thousands-miles-long travels. It depicts eight migratory birds that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Read more The Joys of Sketching Birds I love to draw birds and I plant flowers in my garden to attract them. I have been drawing and painting with watercolors most of my life. – Herenia Doerr, 92, Silver Spring, Md. Read more Past Issues of the RCC Bird Watch and Wonder
The Latest on The Art of Birds
On a recent 90-plus-degree day in Red Hook, Brooklyn, artist George Boorujy spent hours on the hot concrete, working on a 963-foot-long mural. It’s called “Migratory Pathways,” located on a retaining wall on Bay Street near the Red Hook Ball Fields.
All through the summer, as part of our birding project, The Times has encouraged readers to try different ways of observing birds. One of those ways is sketching. We invited readers to share their drawing efforts, and to describe how sketching changes the birding experience. Here is an additional selection of what readers submitted (see the previous submissions here).
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