favourite animals (& a boat) at the Edinburgh Art Fair 2013

Last weekend over fifty galleries and individual artists took part in the ninth annual Edinburgh Art Fair. I was running children's art workshops at the fair - three a day for each of the three days. Exhausting work but I really love it.



Art in Healthcare

My workshops were organised by Art in Healthcare, a charity with whom I've worked a lot over the past few years. Scottish or Scotland-related artworks from the extensive and expanding Art in Healthcare collection liven up the walls of many hospitals and healthcare settings in the Lothians and beyond. Funds raised through donations and grants are used to run workshops with a big variety of healthcare groups. Some of my own AinH workshops have been at the Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital, with an older mens' group in Pilmeny, and with severely autistic children at St Crispins school.

I'm lucky to also be on Art in Healthcare's Arts Advisory Panel, duties including meeting regularly to assess the collection and to discuss possible new acquisitions and donations. View the AinH collection here - www.artinhealthcare.org.uk/gallery.php

You can find out all you might wish to know about Art in Healthcare online,
including the different ways you can support their valuable work - www.artinhealthcare.org.uk/support_us.php

An AinH blog post about my work - artinhealthcare-scotland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/artist-uncovered-leo-du-feu.html

My post about my AinH Sick Kids Hospital workshop - landscapeartnaturebirds.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/painting-birds-in-royal-hospital-for.html





Edinburgh Art Fair

- kids are so uninhibited in their art, they have such creative minds and get so much enjoyment from it. They (mostly) haven't reached that stage that so many of us do as adults - the fear and embarrassment of our art not being quality, therefore not doing any art at all. A big part of art is about pleasure; the satisfaction and stimulation of creating, the joy of the materials. If a masterpiece appears at the end - great! - but aim for a masterpiece and it rarely will happen. Just as true for professional artists as for anyone else - you should see some of the pages in my sketchbooks! But it doesn't stop us from doing it.

Here are some of the pictures made over the weekend. Drawing, cutting, glue-ing, colouring. Many thanks go to the Edinburgh Art Fair, to Art in Healthcare and especially to the numerous Art in Healthcare volunteers and interns who were always on hand to assist with my workshops. Also to art supplier Great Art who provided AinH with a fantastic array of materials for the children to work with.

The Edinburgh Art Fair takes place at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange each November.

2013 - November BTO waterbird count, Linlithgow - Philpstoun

My monthly BTO WeBS count along the Union Canal, Linlithgow to Philpstoun.

Tuesday 12th November 2013.

Start time 8.20am

End time 11.10am

Low winter sun. Cold wind – especially on the fingers when using binoculars. Wind perhaps hiding some birds. A speck or two of rain.

Is there a flood-field?:

Yes! Though it's a minor flood compared to previous years. The draining appears to have largely worked. Nevertheless, there were some birds...

Flood field. Greylag geese, oystercatchers, gulls.

count notes 12.11.2013

The count:

- A beautiful winter morning but sun strongly in my eyes at times, difficult to look for birds on the canal.

- A large number of gulls - hundreds; black-headed, common and herring - were following a plough.

- Fieldfares 'chacking' and redwings 'tseeping' all over, seen and heard the whole length of the count. No more than a month since they arrived from northern Europe.

In Philpstoun woods:

A mistle thrush was shouting at redwings, chasing them off its ivy cloaked sycamore. On the ground chaffinches of both sexes plus a lady great tit with her slimmer-than-the-male black breast stripe foraged the beech leaf litter, almost invisible without binoculars. A robin hopped close as I wrote these notes and goldcrests squeaked high up to my right. A blue tit performed acrobatics lower down in the same sycamore, searching leaves and bark for grubs. A wren was singing loudly and a squirrel (grey) was scolding. A second grey approached through the trees, attracted by the noise of the first.

Tree sparrows:

A tree sparrow – a little smarter than his/her cousin house sparrow. Tree sparrows have a fully chestnut head, the house sparrow (male) has a grey-cap on top of his chestnut. Tree are the more delicate of the two and have crisp black patches on white cheeks, house sparrows are overall more grey. Male and female tree sparrows are identical whereas house sparrow male and female are quite different from each other - the female is fairly indistinct, what birders refer to as an lbj ('little brown job'). 

House sparrows are more associated with urban areas, tree sparrows with farmland. I've only a handful of times seen tree sparrows in our garden but half a kilometre east along the towpath, out of Linlithgow, and suddenly they become as common as house sparrows. There are good numbers of tree and house sparrows in the hedgerows around Park Farm, half way along my count, though sadly no longer in the immediate grounds of the large house since feeders were removed and most of the garden shrubs and hedging replaced with lawn.

All water birds eligible for count:

moorhen - 5

goosander - 1

grey wagtail – 1

greylag goose – 33

oystercatcher – 48

curlew - 10

black headed gull – 10

common gull – 5

herring gull – 1

(Plus the hundreds of uncounted gulls following that plough) 

Of the above, the following were on flood field:

black headed gull – 10

common gull – 5

herring gull – 1

oystercatcher - 48

curlew - 10

All birds seen:

Black-headed Gull

Blackbird

Blue Tit

Bullfinch

Carrion Crow

Chaffinch

Collared Dove

Common Gull

Curlew

Feral Pigeon

Fieldfare

Goldcrest

Goldfinch

Goosander

Great Tit

Grey Wagtail

Greylag Goose

Herring Gull

House Sparrow

Jackdaw

Long-tailed Tit

Magpie

Mistle Thrush

Moorhen

Oystercatcher

Redwing

Robin

Rook

Skylark

Starling

Tree Sparrow

Treecreeper

Woodpigeon

Wren

34 - species

Starling. Spot the spots.

Spot the redwings. No, those are hawthorn berries. The redwings are much bigger, and fewer in number, and birds.

An interesting tree:

Look closely. This tree has grown a loop.

The large branch grows downwards then left. At the very edge of the photo a small branch, um, branches right and heads back up towards photo top-right. The photo below shows the joining point, close-up.

Not in the woods:

a train, 'Clearing Britain's Railways'

Italy. October 2013

We're in Italy! Castelforte, near Naples. It's so exciting being in a new country, with new birds. I love the act of spotting, trying to note as many details as possible, looking in the book and **hopefully** identifying. It makes you look more carefully at each creature you see.

Back home I know all of the regular birds and it's too easy to take them for granted and hardly look at all. Here, that blackbird (or is it a starling?) that's just flown to perch on the parapet of San Giovanni Battista belltower might be a blackbird, but it might be something else... like a blue rock thrush! Monticola solitarius. Dusky blue and black. An especially beautiful bird.

Two black redstarts were up on the tower before, fluttering out and back, out and back, to catch flies and the floating spiders that use silken threads as sails to ride the wind. The male redstart looks shimmery coal black until he turns and you see his rust red tail. The juvenile and non-breeding plumage is a lighter tan grey, still with some of the rust red on tail.

This morning from the balcony a blue tit was on an aerial across rooftops. That seemed strange, such a familiar bird in such an alien setting. A small but bright dab of yellow and blue amongst whitewash and red tiles.

Other familiar birds are feral pigeons, collared doves, magpies and sparrows. Though the the sparrows so far have been tree not house.

From the car yesterday I saw two sparrowhawks, one plunging towards a spooked group of pigeons. At the car hire outside the airport two parakeets were flying far off, long-tailed and squawking, like the ring-necked's in London. Also gulls overhead, no attempt yet to identify.

At the mall (yes, I thought that too, but with eight of us we needed to do a big shop...) crows were chattering around the top of a pylon. Quite a few carrion crows and two their grey-tabarded relatives, though my book doesn't show hooded as being in Italy at all. Carrion and hooded are the same species but two different races, with mostly separate ranges. Interbreeding does occur.

It's not just birds. Plants are new, and insects and reptiles. Lemons are growing and yellowing, prickly pear fruits are reddening, olives are browning. Two geckos suckered vertically outside our kitchen veranda last night. A bat flying through lamplight below and around the balcony. I could slightly hear its squeaking but Eva could hear it better with her younger ears.

Lizards were scuttling along the walls of a square that we stopped in. Seeking sun to warm bodies of green, brown, yellow scales. They dart, stop-and-start, like a mouse. The kids gave an impromptu performance of 'Crazy Crazy' and Gangnam style in the circle in the square here whilst the more attentive adults watched and I scanned the opposite hillside for birds, hearing what I think were jays. A big patch of ivy flowers (unassuming light green buds) attracted more bees, hoverflies, wasps, flies and ultra-large wasps (some type of hornets?) than we'd ever seen, making more insect noise than we'd ever heard.

There are red admirals and whites and one butterfly with sunshine yellow wings, flame red towards the body, that glided past me, gone before I'd had time to do more than briefly wonder.

Our traditional old Italian mansion is amazing, filled with the family history of its owners. Its view is incredible. Stereotypical Italian rooftop vista, hazy light like a Turner. I think I'm almost feeling relaxed.

2013 - October BTO waterbird count, Linlithgow - Philpstoun

My monthly BTO WeBS count along the Union Canal, Linlithgow to Philpstoun.

(NB my September 2013 WeBS count has not yet been blogged, despite being referenced later in this post.)


Thursday 10th October 2013.

Start time 9am
End time 12noon


Bright sun, hot sun (when walking fast) - cold if you stood still - a strong northerly is blowing, bringing us Arctic air. No rain.



Still no flood-field?:

It's looking like the farmer's efforts to drain the field might have worked. We've had some rain recently but not even a puddle has accumulated. My waterbird counts are probably going to become a lot less interesting in terms of species and numbers. Today in the field - crows, rooks, jackdaws and cows.

count notes 10.09.2013

The count:

Today's weather conditions were about the worst possible. I don't like to do the count on sun shining days because it glares into my eyes from forwards right, exactly the direction I need to look to see the canal. Unless I walk backwards. Which I don't. Even a peaked hat doesn't solve the problem - the sun still reflects up from the surface of the water.

Gulls were in evidence but only ever far overhead, not eligible for the count. I saw moorhens, mallards, two swans and something unusual - a large flock of waders, large for here anyway. On a freshly planted field. Fairly far off and awkwardly lit. I'm not good at most of the waders but I thought of golden plovers or dunlin. Crouching against a section of towpath wall and using knees as an elbow rest I counted the group and took down as much detail as I could see through my binoculars. They were very round little things, fluffy-like. Warm white/light cream under and a beautiful golden-green on top. The low autumn sun accentuated the gold. They had stubby black beaks and I wanted them to have dark legs too - I think that's what golden plover have - but I couldn't see. There were 73, give or take a few. Some were preening, most just resting, heads tucked under wings.

Suddenly I was hearing a low plaintive whistling and a second group of the same birds were sweeping back and fore above the field. They seemed to want to land but never quite managed, nearly touching down before en masse swooping back up, wing a flutter. They flipped side to side in the air, showing uppers then unders, uppers then unders. Uppers were entirely dark, unders entirely light. Their legs were dark! There were 25 in the flock, give or take a few. Once they passed directly over my head and I heard the swoosh of their wings.

Rory, who I meet almost every time I'm out on this count, came up. He's retired, cycles or walks his dog along here most days. We chatted about what we'd seen, about his daughter in Australia and my brother in Australia (Not together. See Roan's excellent blog here - queenofnothingkingoftheworld.blogspot.com.au ) and about my exhibition that opened in Glasgow the week before last (see the exhibition online here - www.leodufeu.co.uk). Rory expressed shock that I couldn't definitely identify this group of waders. I asked him not to tell the BTO. I spotted a kestrel fly past, scimitar wings, long straight tail, like other birds of prey. We looked back to the waders - gone. Scared off by the predator.

Now that I've written-up the encounter I'm going to consult the books...

(5 minute pause - if this was live I'd say make yourself a cup of tea)

Golden plover! (Pluvialis apricaria) There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of knowing a bit, observing and jotting down everything that might help, then getting to your books and searching through the birds. They weren't grey plover because they hadn't black armpits. Dunlin are far smaller. This is the golden plover's call in flight - www.xeno-canto.org/87693 Grey plovers' in flight sound a more definite 'pee-oo-ee' - www.xeno-canto.org/145310

Golden plover i.d. notes

All water birds eligible for count:

moorhens - 8
mallards - 8
mute swans - 2 (both green ring, black lettering. Female LPJ. Male PFB.)
golden plover - 98




All birds seen:

mallard
moorhen
mute swan
golden plover
house sparrow
goldfinch
chaffinch
skylark
robin
wren
blackbird
magpie
crow
rook
jackdaw
blue tit
great tit
starling
woodpigeon
collared dove
buzzard
yellowhammer
kestrel
gulls (unidentified)

24 (+) species

and a red admiral butterfly.



In the woods:

The Philpstoun woods were less abundant in fungi than last month, when I did the walk during a much wetter period. The little spheres clustering together on the mossy fallen tree have now darkened and some were bursting to reveal and release their dark green spores. I had my fungi book with me this time - Stump puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforme). My favourites, Candle snuff fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon) were growing, standing to attention to scrappily formed ranks.

Stump puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforme)

rude Stump puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforme)

Candle snuff fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon)

a bug stuck to a discus seed

Not in the woods:

a dredger, churning the water traumatically