Painting and Birding 'round the Long Island Sound

Phew!  The last few days have been a whirlwind, ending an exhausting last few weeks.  Yesterday I delivered 20 paintings to the Greene Art Gallery for my solo show which opens tomorrow.  I had picked up a few paintings from the framer on the way to the gallery, and the evening before I was finishing up framing and matting some others.  I had ordered a bunch of pre-made frames for my standard-size paintings, which can be a bit of a gamble when you can never be sure exactly how well a frame will go with a picture.  For the most part I am happy with the results.  If I hadn't waited till the last minute, I may have made some alterations to a few of the frames, but now it is out of my hands.  It is now for the public to decide!

"Spring Awakening" 2011, Sean Murtha

"Razorbills" 2011, Sean Murtha

"After the Rain"  2011, Sean Murtha

"Raft of Scaup" 2011, Sean Murtha

The real sleep-stealer, however, was over the weekend.  I agreed to take my son Brendan to New Jersey to take part in the "World Series of Birding".  This is an annual event in which teams compete with each other to find the most species of birds in the state in 24 hours.  Most teams get sponsorships for a certain monetary amount per bird and put this toward an environmental cause.  We did not take part as a registered team, and therefore were not truly competing, but we did seek private sponsors, and that money will be going to support the research station at Great Gull Island, a critical breeding location for endangered Least and Roseate Terns, as well as other species.  We teamed up with New Jersey native, ace birder, my former boss and now friend Steve Quinn and his wife Linda, and though not competing we still tried our best, birding nonstop from 3 am Saturday till 11 that night.  Actually, nonstop is a misleading term, as much of that time was spent driving- though we tallied many birds from the car, such as Black Vulture, Chimney Swift, and Cattle Egret.  In the end we scored 120 birds.  It was a crazy day- not exactly my favorite way to see birds- and well chronicled by Brendan on his blog, here.

The icing on the cake, however, was the following day, as we had stayed overnight in Cape May, New Jersey.  In May on the Delaware bay shore, one of natures great spectacles takes place.  On the high tide, the surf begins to seethe with spawning Horseshoe crabs in an attempt to deposit their eggs beyond the reach of marine predators.  However, birds have discovered the feast and gather here in huge numbers- mainly Laughing gulls (one of my favorite gulls), but most notably the Red Knot, a remarkable and, unfortunately endangered bird.  Migrating literally from one end of the Americas to the other, it depends on the plentiful feast on the shores of the Delaware bay for critical re-fueling during its journey.  Human impacts all along its route, as well as on its food source, the horseshoe crab, have had a severe affect on the numbers of these hardy sandpipers, but we did manage to find a few, perhaps 12, accompanied by Dunlin and Ruddy Turnstones, staying out of the frenzy of gulls.  It was a life bird for Brendan and myself; hopefully not a once in a lifetime bird.

Brendan has a shirt that reads:  "Life is Simple: Eat, Sleep, Bird".  We did little of the first and almost none of the second this past weekend.  But now the birds are tallied, the paintings delivered, and I can finally sleep...