11 x 14 Graphite Drawing on Vellum
These owls were hatched in an ancient oak in the middle of a children's park in the center of Daphne, Alabama.
They had been featured in the Mobile Press Register for several weeks, and as a birder I was desperate to get down there and photograph them so that I could paint them.
I talked Walter into going down there after work one day. And although I asked Walter to bring his longest lens he didn't. I don't think he fathomed the distance from ground to branch. Fortunately, his normal lens was sufficient, but in the end I felt a graphite drawing fit the subject and composition better.
We tried to hang around long enough to see the mom up close, but she kept her distance in the height of nearby trees. We could hear her swoop and whoosh but by the time we looked up she had secreted herself in the shadows.
