Publication Date
2021
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Abstract
This painting illustrates myself in front of an almost empty net with one Kinglet caught. The setting is at the Joppa Flats Mass Audubon bird banding station in Plum Island where we were expecting flocks of migratory birds for the early fall season of 2019. However, we had a shockingly low number of birds throughout the entire season and this inspired me to paint this painting. The birds in this painting are Golden Crowned Kinglets, Fox sparrows, and a tree sparrow which are migratory songbirds. The top left corner of the painting is the data recording chart used at the banding station to record the data recorder, species, age, sex, weight, capture time, and more. We had several birds caught in the nets in 2019 but in 2018, we had very few birds caught per day. The birds with the blue silhouettes are the birds that are gone because of the population decrease. They are present in the painting but the real birds in the painting are only the birds without the blue aura. I was not at the station in 2018 but I’ve heard from the station manager that 2018 fall was very busy because hundreds of migratory birds were caught in the nets, which is very contrasting to what I have experienced in 2019 fall. This experience opened my eyes to how real climate change is because I could visually see the changes in bird populations as climate change has continuously impacted them.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Winning submission for Sustainability for Arts (UMass Libraries 2021 student scholarship award)