Bird in Hand in watercolour pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is onomatopoeia. And yeah, I'm enough of a language nerd that I didn't have to look it up. The link's just for those of you who might be unfamiliar.

The Black-capped Chickadee (and other chickadees, for that matter) gets its name from the chickadee-dee-dee call it makes. Around here we've nicknamed its whistled song cheeeseburger (you can find it on that last link), but that's another topic altogether. It does help the kids remember it, though.

As a naturalist working (mostly) with children, chickadees have become pretty much my favourite birds. They're around all year, they're vocal, they're interesting to watch, and they don't really give a fig if they are being watched. In fact, with a little patience and some sunflower seeds -- we recommend the small, black oil type -- they can be taught to come right to your hand to feed. I've never done that personally since I'm not a huge fan of encouraging wild animals to come up to humans, but since the chickadee can make a pretty quick getaway it's fairly harmless.

I know that this doodle is really, really rough, but if you'll notice the date of the previous post you'll see that I've been away from the game for months. I've been rehabbing a wrist injury (for rehab read: haven't been able to do eff all except blotch around in my mixed media mess journal), and even now it gets shaky altogether too quickly if my hand tenses up for any length of time.

You know, like to hold a pen. That's a pain, because I really like to fool around with pen and ink.

Ah well, for now we're stuck with my lack-of-painting skills. And hey. Maybe this is the start of being able to work at something for more than half an hour at a time...