American Robin - Harbinger Of Spring

Title

American Robin - Harbinger Of Spring

Artist

Lianne Schneider

Medium

Digital Art - Digital Painting/photographic Art

Description

From: All About Birds - www.allaboutbirds.org/

"American Robins are fairly large songbirds with a large, round body, long legs, and fairly long tail. Robins are the largest North American thrushes, and their profile offers a good chance to learn the basic shape of most thrushes. Robins make a good reference point for comparing the size and shape of other birds, too.

American Robins are gray-brown birds with warm orange underparts and dark heads. In flight, a white patch on the lower belly and under the tail can be conspicuous. Compared with males, females have paler heads that contrast less with the gray back."

"The quintessential early birds, American Robins are common sights on lawns across North America, where you often see them tugging earthworms out of the ground. Robins are popular birds for their warm orange breast, cheery song, and early appearance at the end of winter. Though they're familiar town and city birds, American Robins are at home in wilder areas, too, including mountain forests and Alaskan wilderness.

Cool Facts:
1. An American Robin can produce three successful broods in one year. On average, though, only 40 percent of nests successfully produce young. Only 25 percent of those fledged young survive to November. From that point on, about half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next. Despite the fact that a lucky robin can live to be 14 years old, the entire population turns over on average every six years.
2. Although robins are considered harbingers of spring, many American Robins spend the whole winter in their breeding range. But because they spend more time roosting in trees and less time in your yard, you're much less likely to see them. The number of robins present in the northern parts of the range varies each year with the local conditions.
3. Robins eat a lot of fruit in fall and winter. When they eat honeysuckle berries exclusively, they sometimes become intoxicated.
4. Robin roosts can be huge, sometimes including a quarter-million birds during winter. In summer, females sleep at their nests and males gather at roosts. As young robins become independent, they join the males. Female adults go to the roosts only after they have finished nesting.
5. Robins eat different types of food depending on the time of day: more earthworms in the morning and more fruit later in the day. Because the robin forages largely on lawns, it is vulnerable to pesticide poisoning and can be an important indicator of chemical pollution.
6. The oldest recorded American Robin was 13 years and 11 months old."

Behavior:
Females choose the nest site and build the nest from the inside out, lining the finished nest with fine grass. The nest will be approximately 6-8 inches wide and 3-6 inches deep. Though usually thought of as ground feeders that eat primarily worms and bugs, robins actually eat a great deal of fruit as well, such as chokecherries, juniper berries, and sumac.

"When foraging on the ground, the American Robin runs a few steps, then stops abruptly. In long grass, robins may hop or fly just above the ground powered by slow, powerful wingbeats. American Robins often find worms by staring, motionless, at the ground with the head cocked to one side. Robins sometimes fight over worms that others have caught. During fall and winter robins often roost in large flocks and spend much more time in trees. In spring, males attract females by singing, raising and spreading their tails, shaking their wings and inflating their white-striped throats. When pairs are forming in spring, you may see a display in which a male and female approach each other holding their bills wide open and touching them."

Song:
'The musical song of the American Robin is a familiar sound of spring. It's a string of 10 or so clear whistles assembled from a few often-repeated syllables, and often described as cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up. The syllables rise and fall in pitch but are delivered at a steady rhythm, with a pause before the bird begins singing again. At dawn, the song is more rapid." To hear a number of recordings of robins go to: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_robin/sounds

This image is hand-painted digitally in many layers to give the final work the look and feel of a tapestry. Each layer is separately painted. It is the seventh in my tapestry series of bird paintings - this one uses components from a public domain image courtesy of USFWS.

Many thanks to the following groups/hosts for featuring this image:
DIGITAL REALISM - ANNE
FAA FEATURED IMAGES - ROBERT
ALL NATURAL LANDSCAPES - NADINE AND BOB
ALL SEASONS LANDSCAPES - NADINE AND BOB
VISUAL VOICE - ANNIE
BEST ARTWORK COLLECTIONS - KRISTA
WILDLIFE ONE A DAY - MARIOLA
PREMIUM FAA ARTISTS - MARINESCU
VISIONS OF SPRING - DORA
ALL FINE ART AMERICA ARTWORK - NADINE AND BOB
SIGNATURE STYLE ART - SHARON
ALL STARZ - NADINE AND BOB
ART WITH FLAIR - WILLIAM
EXCELLENT SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTS - JOE
ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS - JOETTA
ROCK THE SALES - JOETTA
ARTIST NEWS - NADINE AND BOB
3 A DAY WAITING ROOM ART - DARREN
SELECTED DIGITAL ART - TAIKAN
ARTISTS BEST FIVE ARTWORKS - TINA
SEASONS OF BEAUTY - SHAWN
BOOK COVERS 1 A DAY - JO ANN
MOTIVATION MEDITATION INSPIRATION - BARBARA
PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXTURES MAKE FINE ART - DARREN
DIGITAL PAINTING - USHA
MEMORIES AND NOSTALGIA - SANDRA
1-2-3-4-5 - SHITLAPRASAD

Copyright Lianne Schneider 2014

All images and my personal poetry/prose are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, downloaded, distributed, transmitted, copied, reproduced in derivative works, displayed, published or broadcast by any means or in any form without prior written consent from the artist. My copyright does not imply rights to an underlying public domain image and I make no such claim. Copyright on works derived from or based on images in the public domain applies only to the subsequent manipulation or painting resulting from my changes. The original image remains in the public domain and such images are used in accordance with international law

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March 5th, 2014

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