Northern harrier

I'd have thought I was watching a short-eared owl hunting if I didn't know our birds of prey fairly well. Their methods are similar and northern harriers have a pretty flat, owlish face for a hawk. They seem to really like Lopez Canyon which connects to our canyon and don't appear to be as bothered by the established invasive mustard as I am. An enormous striped skunk was foraging busily nearby and the hawk did take a brief look, but who in their right mind would tackle that?!

This would make a fitting profile shot for me if I were still able to stomach social media.

Long Shadows in Lopez Canyon. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb hot press paper. 15" x 19" (38 x 48cm).

Here’s a slope cleared for the purpose of creating defensible space for a home backing up to Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. Nature abhors a vacuum and the invasive plants that renew annually take hold and reseed heavily when we don’t stay ahead of them. I spend more time than I’d like weeding in order to keep the worst of them at bay. At least it’s “yoga” in the company of wildlife with the scent of my Cleveland sages and others nearby to cheer me on.

I can’t mention Hawaiian short-eared owls without including a shot of one soaring within a Haleakalā National Park cloud. These are moments one never forgets.

Can't live on nectar alone

If you observe Anna’s hummingbirds for awhile, you'll see them collecting spider webs and lichens for their nests, picking insects off of plants and even catching them midair with all of the maneuvers you'd expect from birds capable of flying backwards. They're the only ones who can do that without help from wind. I recently paused along Peñasquitos Creek one evening to watch this male adding some protein to his diet.

Nesting out back in the big Peruvian peppertree is another Anna's. It's the one plant on the slope I didn't replace with a local native. All of my plantings are doing great with many sages and bladderpod already in flower to nourish the hummingbirds and others. I hope she and her young luck out with the invasive Argentine ants. A nesting attempt on our property line last year ended with the hatchlings being swarmed shortly after the eggs hatched. The California Argentine ant supercolony thrives on our addiction to incessant irrigation.

A few moments in Wilderness Gardens County Preserve

This is a species that results in muffled squeals when I find one. Everything about it is beautiful in my opinion. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with myself for having left my macro lens at home.

California Peony (Paeonia californica)

Kumeyaay Ehmuu (Bedrock Mortar) with Oak Leaf and Acorn

These are used by native people to grind acorns and other foods.

Discarded Butt

If this action had resulted in an inferno, would it really have been a “wildfire?” Careless arson is more like it. And the native plant “fuel” would be blamed.

Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum) with Buffalo Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima)

Coyote Stare

It was a brief encounter and wonderful as always. Coyotes who aren’t fed by humans will be out of sight shortly after you see them.

Fingertips (Dudleya edulis) and Chaparral Yucca Remains (Hesperoyucca whipplei)

I planted this very combination in our backyard years ago and both have become huge. Sea dahlias (Leptosyne maritima) have woven themselves through the chaparral yucca and are currently blooming; the latter will send up a large inflorescence at some point, bloom profusely and then die. Sculptural hardly covers it.

A heartfelt thank you to the people who saved this land for the native plants, wildlife and us to enjoy respectfully. Some “things” are irreplaceable.

Wave-formed still lifes at Torrey Pines State Beach

Spiny Mole Crab Carapace and Pacific Sea Gooseberries

Syringe

Chip Bag and Giant Kelp

Eccentric Sand Dollar

Hook

Microplastic

Weathered Straw and Pacific Sea Gooseberries

Bottle Cap

Wing

T-End Fabric Fastener

Bones

A new piece and an exhibition announcement

My latest mixed media painting.

Empyreal Mist. 2021. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb hot press paper. 14" x 21" (36 x 53cm).

Juror Paul Glenshaw of the Smithsonian Institution selected two of my landscape paintings for inclusion in the 2021 Art on Paper exhibition at Maryland Federation of Art’s Circle Gallery in Annapolis, Maryland. This was one of those times when I found myself admiring every piece included in the show as I scrolled through the gallery of accepted work.

As is typically the case, the paintings I’ll be carefully matting and framing to send across the country were inspired by personal moments in nature.

Passage XI (Comet with Venus). 2020. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb cold press paper. 15" x 20" (38 x 51cm).

Sea of Fog with Green Flash. 2020. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb rough press paper. 14" x 19" (36 x 48cm).

Fragrant evening-primrose (Oenothera cespitosa)

This is the first one of the year with more blossoms on the way. I’m thinking of placing my camera trap facing the next round of buds when I see them beginning to open. Maybe I’ll catch one of its pollinators, the spectacular white-lined sphinx moth. This species isn’t native to the coast, but I couldn’t resist it. It’s well-behaved in the garden and I pluck spent blooms.

Fragrant Evening-Primrose (Oenothera cespitosa)

A white-crowned sparrow's last sunrise

At least he didn’t know the Cooper’s hawk was coming (not for long, anyway). I witness predation events pretty frequently around here. My only wish, since the hawks need to eat as well, is that Artemis would show up a bit more quickly to dispatch prey with her painless arrows, but that’s not how the natural world really works.

The yard has been purposefully turned into a bird garden. There’s a lot of evergreen cover for passerines to hide in when flushed, so the raptors aren’t always successful. For levity’s sake, I’ll share that I felt one of these birds bomb so close to my head while I was planting a native buckwheat at dusk last week that I felt its beating wings over my head. It spared me its talons, no doubt realizing that my bouncing ponytail as I wielded my hori-hori wasn’t one of the California ground squirrels living below the fence after all.

Los Peñasquitos Canyon Sunrise with Mount Laguna

Cooper’s Hawk with White-Crowned Sparrow

Her Desher

In anticipation of Perseverance landing safely on Mars today, I headed back in time with this mixed media piece I made in 2004 titled Her Desher, as "the red one" was known in ancient Egypt. I’ve made quite a bit of celestial-inspired art since my days of watching the shuttle launches and playing with my space LEGO. There’s very little indication that I’ll be growing out of this behavior. And I still have said LEGO in case I feel the urge to celebrate that way.

Robin Street-Morris. Her Desher. 2004. Transparent watercolor and colored pencil on 300lb hot press paper. 8.5” x 11” (22 x 28cm).

Mars made a more recent appearance in The Conversation.  It was visible above a moon cast red by a climate fire in San Diego's East County.  The crows are locals who had paid a visit to the back fence that afternoon while I watched the smoke billow.

Robin Street-Morris. The Conversation. 2020. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb cold press paper. 14" x 20" (36 x 51cm).

Gray whales and Mylar balloons

San Diego is located along the eastern North Pacific gray whale population's migration route between their Baja breeding and summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. A perfect day of mine is sitting on a bench along the Guy Fleming trail at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve and watching them swim by with my binoculars in hand or going out to see them from the vantage point of a boat. My latest piece was inspired by a sighting of a healthy cow and her newborn calf while on the Privateer with San Diego Whale Watch. She clearly didn't make it to the nearby birthing lagoons in Mexico. Said species is in the midst of an unusual mortality event, so it was particularly uplifting to see this pair of whales doing well.

Robin Street-Morris. Baja Bound (Gray Whale Cow Calf Pair). 2021. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb cold press paper. 13" x 20" (33 x 51cm).

And, of course, there were the usual Mylar balloon sightings. I get it. They're shiny and the perfect last minute party touch we spot while checking out at the grocery store. I've seen so many floating on the water and stuck in trees and powerlines that I must admit to fantasizing about popping every last one of them while standing in line. That action would likely earn me a court date unlike the manufacturing of these sea turtle chokers that look like jellyfish once the paint sloughs off. But that's how our society works, right? If you must buy these balloons, please pop them and put them in the trash once the festivity is over in an attempt to keep them from entering the food chain.

They’re doing it right with limited capacity.

Acorn Woodpecker with starling flight

European starlings aren’t native to this country, but I appreciate them anyway. Their beautiful murmurations are grand enough to make the news at times. This photograph captured a more subtle flight. At the far left you can see an acorn woodpecker watching them jockeying for position among the branches of a California sycamore filled with woodpecker nest cavities.

Bromeliad visitor

The flower features of this Tillandsia ionantha’s blossoms were a giveaway to me that one or more of the resident hummingbirds would visit it if I waited and watched. This male Anna’s (Calypte anna) didn’t disappoint.

Nature to the rescue

This isn’t the same pair of great horned owls as was shown mating in a recent post of mine. They also live in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve here in San Diego about a mile west of the others, though I suppose they’re still slumming it in the eyes of some owls since they live east of the 5. Years ago, I was able to come to the conclusion that this isn’t the same pair as the other one by being present for their evening wake up routines at the same time on different days on multiple occasions. I'd not visited this pair in awhile. Their territory is farther from the house with a rockier walk up and out left to contend with in the dark which was done last night while listening to the hauntingly beautiful sound of howling coyotes. I also try to see the closer pair more often because I’d like to figure out where they choose to nest, if indeed they do, and if it’s in a spot I can observe without venturing off trail or onto private property.

We were fortunate to see this male sail silently over our heads and land in a distant tree where he began hooting to his mate. She flew out from deep in the woods along the creek to a spot in a bare California sycamore. They followed each other into inaccessible darkness after a brief duet.

This is the male great horned owl. He has deeper hoots than she does.

That’s the female.

Zooming out, you can see them in their respective perches here. I was shooting with a 100-400mm telephoto lens and keeping my distance from them so as not to impact their behavior.

It left with me.

With so little else open during this pandemic, our local preserves and state parks are getting even more trashed than usual. These spaces were set aside first and foremost to protect the remnants of what was here after people began bulldozing land for our sprawling homes, office parks and large scale agriculture. It’s possible to recreate in them and celebrate their beauty while treating them with respect, but that requires thinking about the consequences of our actions. Discarding plastic, cigarette butts and tearing up narrow trails made more fragile by winter rains and heavy fog threatens the plants and wildlife that live within these areas. They have no other homes to retreat to.

This wintry sunset in beautiful Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve required no editing in Photoshop.

Prints of this photograph may be purchased by clicking on the image.

Happy New Year. Thanks for your continued emotional and financial support of living artists, any living artist. I’d say 2021 can’t be any worse than what we’ve just experienced, but entropy is clearly still a thing.

—Robin Street-Morris

Happy Winter Solstice!

Robin Street-Morris. Winter Beech, Diurnal Moon. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb incised hot press paper. 13" x 20" (33 x 51cm).

California kingsnake

I was thrilled to see this California kingsnake (Lampropeltis californiae) heading across a trail in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. Had I not been looking down, I could have easily stepped on it or put the front wheel of one of my bikes across its back. Flattened animals and plants are situations I encounter in our San Diego preserves all too often. I stuck around until it made its way safely across.

Owl encounter

I’ve never seen a bird I didn’t like. That said, I do have my favorites and owls are among them. My first owl sighting was of a snowy in Michigan many years ago while traveling between Ann Arbor and Lansing to drop off some art at a show. That’s a particularly ethereal species that leaves a lasting impression. I was fortunate to see two more snowies near Kansas City during an irruption year. Great horned owls are similarly charismatic. I really got into watching them in St. Louis, first with the guidance of naturalist and friend Mark Glenshaw and then on my own. It’s a pursuit that followed me to San Diego where I’ve continued to seek out new pairs of this species and others. So far, I’ve seen many great horned owls, barn owls and western screech-owls in the preserves, burrowing owls at Ramona Grasslands and Mission Bay, and long-eared owls in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The California spotted owl is my white whale and will likely require many more trips to the mountains if I’m ever to catch a glimpse of one.

The first pair of great horned owls I encountered in San Diego and made a point of visiting for years were (are, hopefully) in Tecolote Canyon Natural Park. Most of my sustained observations of particular pairs have been in Western Hills Neighborhood Park, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve Extension and here in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. I’m aware of three pairs in the main canyon, but there are likely quite a few more given the density of quality habitat and abundance of prey. After checking on some plants in the canyon and picking up trash yesterday, I walked over to see if I could catch glimpses of the pair closest to my home. I heard them dueting deep in the live oaks over the bubbling of the creek. Eventually the female flew out and pinnacled on a California sycamore branch. She continued hooting back to him until he flew over to her to mate. She flew north out of sight shortly afterward with me being unable to reacquire her without trampling plants and wandering through people’s yards. Unlike some other pairs of these owls I’ve watched from the beginning of the nesting season to owlets going off to find their own territories, I’ve yet to see these birds nest. The winter rains arrive and the preserve closes due to dangerous flooding and to keep people off the trails that degrade very easily when they’re wet. Maybe some day I’ll get lucky. Even if I don’t, it’s comforting to know they’re there going about their lives in an area that’s been set aside for wildlife, rare native plants and us.

Riparian Fog at Dawn

The above habitat is part of the owls’ territory and includes the tree they mated in. Prints of this photograph may be purchased by clicking on said image.

Bobcat

We were recently cited by the San Diego Fire Department for having overgrown foliage. Coastal sunflowers (Encelia californica) and other natives to this area experience a dormancy period in summer and early fall that make some of them appear dead even though they’re not. As I trimmed them back to appease the powers that be, I encountered green wood immediately. While green in outward appearance, the nonnative bank catclaw (Acacia redolens) planted by the developer to stabilize the slope has been removed. I’m replanting the slope myself with more species that are native to our address. This bobcat recently walked past a newly planted Del Mar manzanita (Arctostaphylos glandulosa ssp. crassifolia) and marked its Acacia stump.

Speaking of chaparral, a piece of mine titled Nemeton VII, inspired by a tunnel of oaks in nearby Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve, was just selected for The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild 2020 Online International Winter Exhibition which in online for obvious reasons. The original is available. Prints may be purchased by clicking on the image of the painting below.

Robin Street-Morris. Nemeton VII. 2020. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb cold press paper. 14" x 20" (36 x 51cm).

Chaparral Sunset

My latest mixed media painting was inspired by my love of our dwindling chaparral here in southern California due to development. It's far from being my first and likely won't be my last. I often head up to Del Mar Mesa Preserve to appreciate the sunsets while surrounded by a sea of native foliage that’s habitat for local wildlife.

Please click on the image of it below if you’re interested in purchasing a print or send me a message if you’re interested in the original. Living artists such as myself appreciate your patronage.

—Robin Street-Morris

Robin Street-Morris. Chaparral Sunset. 2020. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb hot press paper. 15" x 21" (38 x 53cm).

More treats, fewer tricks. Please.

I’ve got what those of us in the art biz refer to as a cohesive body of work. Then there are my divergences. Nature is almost always at the root of my inspiration, sometimes I just feel like expressing it a little differently.

The creatures we identify with Halloween, including bats, owls, corvids (thinks crows and ravens) and black cats, bring me joy year-round, as does art inspired by them. These animals continue to battle bad reputations among the superstitious and are deserving of positive press. In the spirit of the season, the San Diego Natural History Museum shared a short piece debunking some of the myths about bats out there. They’re mutual friends of ours if you don’t like being swarmed by mosquitos and enjoy tequila and mezcal.

Prints of any of these pieces can by purchased by clicking on the images of them below. Thanks for supporting living artists and Happy Halloween!

—Robin Street-Morris

Hears All, Sees All. Colored pencil on 80lb archival paper. 7" x 11" (18 x 28cm).

The Conclave. Transparent watercolor on 300lb cold press paper. 13” x 19” (33 x 48cm).

Walking with Bats and Fireflies. Transparent watercolor and soft pastel on 300lb cold press paper. 13" x 20" (33 x 51cm).

A Jack-o'-Lantern Welcome. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb incised hot press paper. 6” x 8” (15 x 20cm").

Tonight We Fly. Watercolor on 300lb hot press paper. 7” x 11” (18 x 28cm).

Faded

Something about this fallen orchid blossom made me want to take its portrait.

Sunny Side Up

I love coastal California poppies both for their extended blooming season and their compact, blue-green foliage tipped with burgundy. It compliments the orange and yellow of their exceptionally beautiful and cheerful blossoms perfectly. Ours have only been watered by fog in many months and are frequented by native bees.

Prints are available here.