R is for Raptor

On bank holiday monday, I visited Raptor Foundation with two of my friends. It's always nice to be able to see birds in close up and draw them without worrying about them flying away.



I had just finished reading "H is for Hawks" by Helen Macdonald so it meant more to see the staff flying the hawks.  The book was really interesting as I could visualise woods in Brekland, places in Cambridge and refer to books like "Once and Future King" and "His Dark Materials".  It seems that falconry is a totally different world from loving birds and watching them.  Helen wrote that she almost became a goshawk by practicing it and quoted the scene when Wart were turned into a merlin sitting next to Cully, the goshawk. That was the scene inspired me when I was writing my "Snow in Summer," an story idea about the world in a snow globe. 



It was pity that the raptor foundation didn't have a goshawk in display but I sketched the saker/peregrine falcon instead, thinking about the prologue of "Silent Spring Revisited," another book I am currently reading, which talks about J.A.Baker's "Peregrine" and possibility of his peregrine being a saker falcon lost by a falconer.



I had to draw the little owl, too!





And this is what I had been working on these days!



Hobby print from the Minsmere trip!