The main event of the past several years has been that I have found some amazing birdwatching spots near where I live in Houston—not well-known public spots, these are more "I found a spot" spots. I've seen more species than you can imagine in a couple of small areas, and I have seen the visiting birds through several migratory seasons. One perpetual resident—two actually—are an osprey and some red-shouldered hawks. I've seen multiple osprey too actually. The osprey sails in every day around lunchtime and the hawks are always present. On this one occasion the osprey got into the hawk's territory, and the smaller bird chased him away. I was completely busy doing something else when it happened but managed to snap a couple of pictures anyway.
Seeing these birds is the best thing that can happen in any given day.
With that in mind, I seem to be doing a lot more dragon paintings lately than usual which is really just a return to being 14-16 years old. Something about winged things. Watching the birds of prey sail past me at eye level constantly is an incredible experience (I found a vantage point that's about level with the tops of trees in a basin) and I can only hope that I can get some better binoculars or cameras some day.
This is my most-looked-at painting from the past week since I started listing things on Etsy again regularly.
