I wouldn’t really call myself a bird watcher, I’m definitely not a twitcher, or much of a tweeter for that matter, but as a subject they are a reason for me to look at the landscape in more detail. The fact is they are ever present in plain sight, yet hardly noticed. Their soundscape is one you never quite listen too amongst the ubiquitous noise of traffic and people. This anonymity makes most people indifferent to birds but if they disappeared we would all notice the gap they left.

The photos I take don’t focus on the bird alone as my interest is the bird and its own landscape. The juvenile Fulmar practicing its first flight in the updraft of a cliff. A young Gannet getting ready to fly off to sea to destinations we have little knowledge about. Egyptian geese encountered on a bench in London next to the Thames.

There is often a contradiction in an image of a bird on the ground as their landscape is not our landscape. With seabirds or swifts it’s a space in the air that they inhabit, and, in a split second they are  gone . Often all I have is a photograph of the empty space they leave behind or a half drawn sketch.

When sketching I also tend to look for the character, or maybe that’s the wrong word, it could be the attitude of the bird, but possibly that’s too anthropomorphic.