Junior Duck Stamp entries due in early 2011

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service enacourages K-12 students to share their art skills while learning about ducks by entering the 2011 Junior Duck Stamp competition. Most states' competitions have a March 15, 2011, deadline, but some states have much earlier deadlines, such as January. Check your state on this map to confirm its rules and deadline.

In addition to awarding national recognition and cash prizes ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 for artwork, the competition includes a conservation component. Students can submit a conservation message that "expresses the spirit of what they have learned through classroom discussions, research, and planning for their Junior Duck Stamp Contest entries." The first-place winner will receive a $500 cash prize.

The program also recognizes "the integral part teachers and parents play in education and the future of the youth of our Nation," so it provides the national winner, a parent or guardian, and the winner’s teacher with a free trip to Washington, D.C., for the First Day of Sale ceremony in late June/early July.

Art contest focuses on endangered species

Forty schoolchildren around the country recently learned that their artwork earned semifinalist status in the annual Endangered Species Day Art Contest. Ten students in four age categories -- grades K-2, 3-6, 7-9 and 10-12 -- will have their art judged on May 4 by a panel of scientists, artists, conservationists, photographers and actors including Jeff Corwin, host of Animal Planet’s "Jeff Corwin Experience," and Jack Hanna, host of "Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild."

In the K-2 group, five of the 10 children chose birds as their subjects (Piping Plover, Spotted Owl, Bald Eagle, Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Sandhill Crane) while one artist in the 3-6 category chose Brown Pelican.

Among the students in the 7-9 group, four seminalists chose endangered birds -- Swallow-tailed Kite, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown Pelican, California Condor -- and the 10-12 category included three pieces about birds: Northern Spotted Owl (two) and Kirtland's Warbler.

To see all of the artwork, visit Endangered Species Coalition. Details about the contest appear here, and information about Endangered Species Day -- May 21 -- is available here.

Scott Weidensaul to receive award April 24

At Mill Grove -- the first American home of French artist, naturalist and author John James Audubon -- birder and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Scott Weidensaul will receive the first John James Audubon Center Award for Art Inspiring Conservation. His work will be honored at Friends of a Feather, a gala reception at the facility in Audubon, Pa. Weidensaul's most recent book, "Of a Feather: A brief history of American birding," debuted in September 2007.

Sponsored by Audubon Center at Mill Grove, the award seeks to honor an artist who conveys the value of nature, interprets conservation challenges and inspires action to protect birds and other wildlife.

“John James Audubon used a brush to transform how Americans look at nature; Scott Weidensaul uses words to the same magical effect,” said Jean Bochnowski, director of the center.

Scott Weidensaul does more than write about birds. As a federal licensed bird-bander, he leads teams from the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art (Millersburg, PA) to harmlessly catch, band and release hundreds of Saw-Whet Owls each fall. Much of what is now known about the migratory patterns of these tiny and elusive raptors comes from the work of Mr. Weidensaul and hundreds of other volunteer researchers.

Tickets for the gala reception begin at $65; contact the center at 610-666-5593 x105 or millgrove@audubon.org.

Duck Stamp contest goes west

For the first time in 61 years, the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest will occur in the West next October. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently announced that the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Calif., will host the two-day judging event for an annual contest that draws hundreds of entries.

“Having this prestigious contest in the heart of the urban Bay Area provides a unique opportunity to introduce new, non-traditional audiences to the importance of wetlands and wildlife conservation,” said Ren Lohoefener, regional director of the service’s Pacific Southwest Region.

With the event open to the public, authorities from the art, waterfowl and philatelic communities will judge the art. The winning entry will appear on the Federal Duck Stamp, also known as the Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, and the winning artist will receive a pane of stamps bearing his or her design.

All waterfowl hunters age 16 and older are required to purchase and carry a current Federal Duck Stamp. In addition to hunters, conservationists, recreational birders, stamp collectors and others also purchase the $15 stamp in support of habitat conservation for a wide diversity of species.

Ninety-eight percent of the proceeds from stamp sales go to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund, which supports the purchase of wetlands for inclusion into the National Wildlife Refuge System. About 1.8 million stamps are sold each year nationwide. Twenty refuges in the Pacific Southwest Region have directly benefitted from the sale of Federal Duck Stamps.

The 2009 Federal Duck Stamp Contest winner -- Robert Bealle of Waldorf, Md. -- will see the stamp bearing his American Wigeon (above) go on sale on June 25. Details about the 2010 contest appear here, and the entry deadline is Aug. 15.

Murmur: bird flocks captured in photos

Richard Barnes isn't the typical bird photographer by any means. He doesn't focus solely on the birds. One of his collections, Refuge, features bird nests made with human trash. His online bio says:

Recent exhibitions include Phylum and Refuge, which looked at the hybrid architecture of a collection of bird nests constructed of materials we humans throw away. In this borrowing process the detritus of our lives: Christmas tinsel, hair, dental floss, etc., become the building materials for birds. The nests hover ambiguously, between the natural and the artificial.

Eleven images appear here.

An exhibition titled Murmur followed those images. In 11 images here, Barnes shows the beauty of aerial flocks.

Jonathan Rosen, author of "The Life of the Skies: Birding at end of nature" (2008), wrote about Barnes' work and birds' flight patterns here.

In Europe, where the birds are native — Mozart had a pet starling that could sing a few bars of his piano concerto in G major — they still have the power to turn heads. Each fall and winter, vast flocks gather in Rome. They spend the day foraging in the surrounding countryside but return each evening to roost. (Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” called the birds reverse commuters.) They put on breathtaking aerial displays above the city, banking in nervous unison, responding like a school of fish to each tremor inside the group.

Drawing the Motmot exhibit in Okla. museum

Until Jan. 18, birders can visit Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Okla., and see "Drawing the Motmot: An Artist's View of Tropical Nature." The exhibit features the art and commentary of nature artist Debby Kaspari, and it focuses on tropical forests in Central and South America.

Kaspari first began drawing and painting the rainforest in Trinidad in the late 1980s. She fell in love with the lush exotic landscape and made many subsequent trips to the tropics, including sites in Panama and Costa Rica. Last winter, a grant from the Don and Virginia Eckelberry Endowment allowed her to make a trip up the Amazon River to work at a research station deep in the rainforest of Peru. There she was able to draw the flora and fauna of the rainforest canopy thanks to an elevated walkway linking 14 trees through a system of platforms and rope bridges.

For the past four years, Kaspari has been working with the museum to develop an exhibit that would give visitors the same sense of peace, beauty and wonder she herself experienced in the field.

“I wanted this to be more than just an art exhibit,” Kaspari explained. “I wanted to share the environment as I see and feel it. I wanted to bring a visitor into the rainforest and give them the chance to connect with it the way I do, through artwork and media.”

Kaspari maintains a blog, a Facebook profile and a Twitter account, so opportunities to enjoy the artist and her work abound. Although the exhibit will leave the museum in six weeks, you can continue to enjoy Kaspari's talent via the links above.

New York Times: "Audubon's Species: Bird Art, in All Its Glory"

Did you catch the delightful article by Cornelia Dean about John James Audubon and three recent books about bird art? The article begins with an unfortunate incident:

In 1812, John James Audubon filled a wooden box with about 200 of his paintings of American birds and left it with a relative for safekeeping while he went off on one of his many trips. When he returned to retrieve the paintings, he discovered to his horror that they had been destroyed, shredded by nesting rats.

As he described it later, his first reaction was “a burning heat” in his brain, a headache so intense it kept him awake for days.

Then, though, he reconsidered. “I felt pleased,” he wrote, “that I might now make better drawings than before.”

We know the results — Audubon turned himself into the most famous practitioner of what some call “bird art.” Copies of his “Birds of America,” published section by section in the mid-19th century, are among the most valuable illustrated books.

Carolina Parakeet by John James Audubon, couresty of NYTimes.com

Check out the online article, if only for the photo of an X-ray showing a Kiwi carrying an egg. Viewers also can watch a slide show of beautiful and interesting images, like the one above.

Nature artists donate proceeds to conservation charities

Have you heard of the Artists for Conservation Foundation? It used to be known as Worldwide Nature Artists Group. Its member sell their art through the site and commit a portion of the proceeds to a conservation charity.

The current Art for Conservation potential pledge total stands at more than $13 million. The designated charities include National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, BirdLife International's Save the Albatross campaign, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BirdLife International, International Crane Foundation and HawkWatch International among others.

"Among the Willows" by Linda J. Parkinson