#250 Cliff Swallows #250

by William Lum

Title

#250 Cliff Swallows #250

Artist

William Lum

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

Under the Crocker Ranch Road bridge which crosses over the South Branch Antelope Creek in Roseville, California is a colony of cliff swallows. You can see the nesting colony easily from the Pleasant Grove Creek Trail that goes under the bridge. Why they named it Pleasant Grove Creek trail instead of Antelope Creek trail is beyond me. This is what a few nests looked like in June 2016.

The cliff swallow is the same species, Petrochelidon pyrrhonota, as the famous swallows that return to the mission in San Juan Capistrano, California, every spring; They migrate to South America for winter.

From Audubon.org: Typically nests in colonies, sometimes with hundreds of nests crowded close together. Nest site is usually on vertical surface with some overhead shelter. Natural sites were on cliffs; most sites today on sides of buildings, under bridges, in culverts, or similar places. Nest is made of dried mud and shaped like a gourd, with large chamber for nest, narrowing to small entrance on side.

For this transparent watercolor painting I used hot pressed watercolor paper which has a smoother surface than my normal cold press. It worked well for the hovering swallow with it's blurred wings in motion.

Uploaded

October 4th, 2016

Statistics

Viewed 188 Times  -  Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/19/2024 at 3:18 PM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags