Taking Flight By Drawing Late at Night
By Leela Stoede
November 2022
“What’s that?” I asked Tom in excitement. It was early in the semester, the week after our first bird walk with Will, and Tom (another student doing the VIP course) had offered to take me out and help me learn the birds that surrounded me since he’d been studying them for far longer than I had.
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“A juvenile herring gull,” he informed me kindly. Herring gulls are some of the most common birds you find around St. Andrews.
A couple minutes later and another bird passed overhead, gorgeous white spotted with brown flecks. “What’s that one?” I asked again, equally excited.
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“Another juvenile herring gull.” He said patiently. Another couple minutes and sure enough I pointed out another juvenile herring gull, asking him what it was. It was comical how many times I asked about that one bird – how many times Tom had to repeat the words “juvenile herring gull” – on that walk. And yet, for whatever reason I couldn’t link the two up in my mind, the name, and the bird I was seeing.
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In the subsequent weeks that followed, as much as I enjoyed the bird walks with Will or on my own, I really struggled identifying the birds I was seeing. Even after seeing the same bird time and time again, I kept returning to the Collins bird app to find it, scrutinizing myself for my inability to connect what I was seeing in real life to what I had read on paper.
In my own time, I began drawing the birds I was seeing, little sketches that illustrated just enough to differentiate one bird from another. They were simple sketches, but they did enough that when I was out on my walks and I saw a bird I drew, their names appeared in my mind.
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The Biodiversity Literacy VIP got me excited about the beings that surround me, motivating me to find a way that works for me to read and greet my environment. What follows is three sketches of birds, that I returned to and redrew in detail. Three birds that played pivotal roles in my identity as a “bird watcher.” Three birds that made my immediate environment start to feel more alive and familiar.
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Some of my simple bird sketches:
European Robin
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Will once told me that as sailors docked their boats around the world, they would name the first red chested birds they saw a “robin”; a reminder that they are not too far from home. For me, although the European Robins became familiar, they also made me realize how strikingly far away from home I was.
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I grew up with robins, American Robins, nesting in my back yard. On hikes in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado I would look for them among the needles of evergreen trees, where they would often build their first homes. In the spring and early summer, I would listen juvenile robins find their voice, like teenagers going through hormonal changes, it was hard not to find comical joy in their song. If you’d asked me what a robin looked like I would describe it as a medium to larger bird, like a thrush, slim and long.
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It was to my surprise then, when a small red chested bird, hardly bigger than the size of my palm, landed on a branch in front of me, Will called it a “robin.” This tiny, round bird in front of me was not the one I had grown up with, and yet it shared the same name. In subsequent days, being able to recognizing these robins transformed the landscape around me. My mornings became alive with the robins becoming the first – and really only – birds I’d hear in the mornings shortly after the sun began its journey in the sky. Their songs were different to the birdsong that greeted me back home, but their song became a familiar greeting, nonetheless. Their presence gently reminding me that I am in a new place, that Scotland offers different things than Colorado might, and that by creating community and learning who I share land with, any place can start to feel like home.
The European Robin
The Barnacle Goose
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The barnacle geese brought me into a space where I felt like an actual “bird watcher” – where I started to feel connected to the nature that surrounded me. Will mentioned them on our first walk, comparing the barnacle goose to the pink footed goose we were looking at, and pointing out how we could tell them apart. He said that they were likely to fly above St. Andrews in early fall and that we should look out for them. I knew nothing of them then, but I went home and I looked them up. A couple weeks later I drew them so that when the time came, and they were to fly above me, I could point them out without having to research them after.
I saw my first flock fly above me during an Earth Science field trip. We were down on the coastal path, and I heard their chatter before I looked up. Their loud, rather bayous chatter had me exclaiming in joy. I knew exactly who they were.
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“Barnacle geese!” I said loudly, pointing them out to the strangers that surrounded me. My friend Robbie didn’t quite know what to do with me I think, grunting a “cool” to, what some might consider, my over-the-top excitement. I saw three more flocks later that day.
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What made me so excited wasn’t just that I recognized the birds immediately, but that I was actively observing the change in seasons and what that meant for the biodiversity around me. I knew that they were due to fly over St. Andrews, and I got to witness them when they did. I was an active member, observing a full space that once felt so flat and unchanging.
Bar Tailed Godwit
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The bar tailed godwit is a bird I have only seen once, towards the end of week 7. It was white (as depicted here) already in its winter plumage, and I nearly mistook it for a curlew – did I mention I’m new at this? By May, and throughout the summer the bird becomes this fiery burnt orange; but in the fall, and throughout the winter – when the bar tailed godwit is likely to be found in the UK – it is a frothy white, the colour of its surroundings. As we enter this time of year, it is a bird that I hope to see more of, and when the seasons change, I will draw it again its summer colour.
Arguably, drawing each bird is an incredibly slow learning process, putting the amount of detail I have put in the three birds above slower still, but to me it is worth it. I still fumble when we are out on our Tuesday morning bird walks and Will asks me about a bird I ought to know. Similar to when I meet new people, I still deeply struggle in connecting faces to names. Yet when I draw birds, when I spend hours on their plumage or the shading of their beaks, it is like I am having a conversation with them, and they become a little more cemented in my mind.
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I am grateful that this VIP does not expect me to be an expert in birds immediately, but that it nonetheless continues to instill in me a want to understand what life is doing around me. It doesn’t just teach me how to read the natural environment but rather, through our walks and Friday talks, has seeded in me a much deeper appreciation for our St. Andrews environment. I notice it in myself, in the way I hardly listen to music on my long walks anymore, instead waiting to hear the up and down coo of a Curlew or the churr of a Wren or the song of a bird I have yet to identify. I am still so deeply in the beginning of my learning journey, and to be honest most of what I hear and see I cannot name yet, but this semester with Will and the other young naturalists around me have encouraged me to pick up my eyes and open my ears. Now, I don’t think I will ever stop.