Herring gulls are blamed for badly damaging 10 planes at local airports since 2000, one more than the nine serious hits blamed on Canada geese. The Canada goose-hits include six at Teterboro, which serves corporate jets. Just eight of those incidents substantially damaged planes.Ĭanada geese - blamed in the felling of US Airways Flight 1549, which ditched in the Hudson River in January - were responsible for 11 hits at local airports in 2008, none considered serious. In the first 11 months of 2008, 402 wildlife hits were reported at Kennedy, La Guardia, Newark and Teterboro. Most bird strikes do not seriously damage airplanes. “You can have 30 major incidents just so many times before one of them is catastrophic,” he said. The rise in dangerous bird-hits around New York worries Steve Garber, a wildlife biologist who for several years in the 1990s ran Kennedy Airport’s wildlife management program. Farms next door to the Sacramento airport are a big bird draw. Sacramento’s airport finished in second place after Kennedy, with 28 dangerous wildlife hits. Kennedy has done far worse with birds than Newark and La Guardia, which have each had nine substantial hits since 2000, and Teterboro, which had eight. Planes at Kennedy suffered “substantial” damage from birds 30 times from January 2000 to November 2008, according to the FAA’s wildlife-strike database.Īnd Kennedy’s problems have gotten worse in the last few years, with the number of substantial hits rising from two or three a year from 2000 to 2004 to five hits in 2005, and four every year afterward. Watch and learn with this series of videos by David Sibley, each focused on drawing a different North American bird species.Kennedy Airport, right next to a bird and wildlife refuge, is the nation’s most dangerous airport when it comes to bird and wildlife strikes, government data released yesterday show. Enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the world a little differently and understanding it a little better. But don't worry about that. Drawing birds is about so much more than just drawing birds. I guarantee your drawings will get better. With practice, you can fill those gaps in your knowledge. Each drawing is a demonstration of what you know about a bird and will also reveal what you don't know. Measure your success by the insights and understanding that come from the process. Most of your illustration attempts will not result in pretty pictures, but don't let that discourage you. While photographs are helpful for learning technical details, the only way to really get to know birds is to watch them in life. Then test how much you've learned with a quick sketch of the same image.īe sure to also study and draw live birds whenever you can. Try a study drawing, where you methodically replicate the intricacies of a photograph. Drawing what you see in a photo will help you explore shapes and patterns without having to deal with a live bird's movement (or disappearance) you can take as much time as you need. Studying close-up photos of birds will allow you to decipher details that are very difficult to classify in life. Paying attention to how a bird holds its wings, or the pattern of dark markings on the flanks, or details of bill shape and color, or any number of other characteristics, will help you to draw those things. I spend a lot of time watching birds and just thinking about drawing them. This makes them challenging, but not impossible, to draw from life. Place Feathers Intentionallyīirds move a lot and quickly. The only place a bird normally looks "fluffy" is on the underside of the body between the legs and the tail, and sometimes on the back of the head. After starting your drawing with big shapes, you need to connect those with smoothly curved lines with no sharp angles or breaks. All feathers grow toward the tail and press against each other to form a sleek, aerodynamic shell. Keeping that in mind, and striving to develop an understanding of feathers, is fundamental to drawing birds. Feathers' primary function is streamlining-allowing birds to move easily through the air even at high speed. Smooth the FeathersĪlmost everything we see when we look at a bird is feathers. Soon you'll be able to see the bird in your sketch even when all you've drawn is a few generic shapes. Practice seeing simple shapes on a live bird, and experiment with putting them on paper. Draw these lines lightly and use them as a guide. Then use stronger lines as you build up the shape. Imagine the point on which the body would balance, and put a vertical line for the feet right there. Begin your drawing with large shapes to establish proportions and posture-an oval for the body, a circle for the head, a line to show the angle of the bill and eye. Birds are complex, and drawing is about simplifying.
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