Corvid: Corvidae

If you’re like I was, you’re probably doing a double take. I mean it looks like the name of that virus we’re all freaked about about, right? But that’s Covid and this has an R and it’s a family of birds we know well.

Corvid:  any of a family (Corvidae) of stout-billed passerine birds including the crows, jays, magpies, and the raven. And my friend Laurie Wigham had the prescience to challenge the Nature Journal club with a shelter-in-place meet up idea to sketch them, 19 of them in fact!

I had already decided to employ my Pentalic accordian fold sketchbook, which was contributing nothing whatsoever by staying in my drawer for the past 12 months, to sketching the bud break in my garden. I realized the other side could be devoted to crows.

This also gave me an opportunity to try out a new bent tip fountain pen I just got.

So you may have guessed that these Corvids were not posing for me, but were gleaned from my online research into what their differences might be.

The Magpies were my favorite. They are real tricksters yet nevertheless they are a good luck symbol, so I think we need them at this moment in time, or maybe always.

The Rook is a Dickensian-looking character of chess fame.

Tomorrow I’ll get out and try to finish the bud side of the book.

And if you’d like to explore sketching the Corvids this week, join in with the Nature Journal Club