Wild Turkey Dusk (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

-
26 January 2011 finds me stopping again to admire Wild Turkeys in a snowy field. Today is not as cold, so their shapes are not as round. The corn stubble no longer shows above the snow, and they must dig deeper to find stray kernels and old fallen cobs.

Wild Turkeys are native to Canada, but disappeared in the early 1900's due to over-hunting and deforestation.


In the 1980's Wild Turkeys from the northern US were introduced into southern Ontario. It is hard to find accounts of this that agree with regards to numbers, but I remember hearing that survival was not good until  they used canon nets to catch whole flocks, so that the Turkeys were relocated with their social structure intact.

We heard an account of an introduction to eastern Ontario in the 1990's that was rather more natural, though I can't find a written account of it. Apparently they played Turkey calls across the ice of the St. Lawrence River, and the flocks walked across from New York to Ontario.

The jury is still out on whether the reintroduction will be good for biodiversity, as Wild Turkeys are known to eat salamanders, frogs, and snakes, and disturb forest ground cover by scratching to feed. This will be a task for long term monitoring....

On 27 December I did my first painting of Wild Turkeys, also on a 5 x 7 inch canvas, called "Wild Turkey Sunset" but this painting somehow disappeared from the blog, so I'll post it again here.

Canada Geese are large birds, but they usually blend into a field. Sometimes I only notice them just as I whisk past on the highway - black necks with white cheeks raised up from a corn stubble field - but Wild Turkeys are much larger and darker. Like grazing cattle or deer, these giant birds become a prominent part of their scene, and I find myself marvelling at them - modern dinosaurs, come to wander in foraging herds in our ordinary landscape.



This original painting is available for $275. For information on purchase and shipping, please contact me at karstad@pinicola.ca

Comments

  1. Kay L. DaviesJanuary 30, 2011 at 1:37 AM

    Interesting subject for some young, up-and-coming, natural scientist to take as a thesis, perhaps.
    -- K

    Kay, Alberta, Canada
    An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

    ReplyDelete
  2. FilipBlogFebruary 17, 2011 at 5:27 PM

    Very nice paintings

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

What do you think of this painting, and what do you know about the subject that I have painted?

Popular posts from this blog

Sturgeon Chute, Upper Rapids (oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in.) Sold

-
Image
1 October finds me painting at the upstream rapids of Sturgeon Chute on the Wanapite River, 6.7 kilometres northwest of Hartley Bay. To get just the right angle on the rapids, screened by flaming leaves of an overhanging Red Maple, I'm standing on a narrow grassy ledge, the small of my back leaning against a cold wall of smooth granite, with the feet of my easel only a few centimetres from the edge. About two metres below, courses the fast deep water,
Read more

Outfall at Nuclear Beach

-
Image
Outfall at Nuclear Beach (oil on birch panel 11x14 in.) 24 January 2024 finds me starting a plein air painting on the icy shore of Lake Ontario, near Pulaski, New York, looking east across Mexico Bay toward the cooling stack of the Nine Mile Point nuclear power station.  I have set myself up to paint on a low ice shelf close to the water, near a bank of amazing ice cobbles tumbled smooth in the waves of a recent storm. At my feet a creek is running free from beneath its silent sheets of ice, along a high barrier of storm-piled frozen wave-spray mixed with ice cobbles. The gentle swells moving in from Lake Ontario splash against ice covered boulders where it finally meets the lake. After I took my initial reference photos, cousin Delos who had guided me here to his favourite spot for photographing sunsets, departed to prepare supper.  By the time I had decided on a painting spot and arranged my plein air studio, the dark clouds on the horizon had lightened, spreading across Me...
Read more

Little Marsh in Limerick

-
Image
"Little Marsh in Limerick" (Oil on birch panel, 6 x 6 in.) 26 December 2023 finds me capturing sunset colours through a tear in the clouds over a small Cattail marsh on Forsythe Rd, 2.3 km E of McRoberts Corner, in Limerick Forest, Grenville County, Ontario. It is 7C after rain, and the road is muddy. We’ve had a rainy Christmas with temperatures well above seasonal average. Cheryl is in the driver’s seat, watching me paint my annual birthday plein air in oils on a   6 x 6 inch cradled birch panel, trying to get it covered with paint before we lose the light and go home for supper.   This little marsh, only a few minutes from home, is a familiar scene. There are observations in Fred’s database over the course of 40 years from this spot, of Muskrat, Beaver, Snapping Turtle, Painted Turtle,  Green Frog, Great Blue Heron, and Red Squirrel. This is a few hundred metres from “Site F” where we listen each spring to monitor Wood Frogs, Gray Tree Frogs, and Spring Peepers....
Read more