New to the Forum (1 Viewer)

Hello, members of the Bird Forum. I'm excited to be a new member. I recently retired from the Missouri Department of Conservation. Although I worked in the Info Technology Section, I've always had a love of birds and all wildlife. Now I spend much of my time creating wildlife art, mostly watercolors, including many birds. I look forward to sharing my work with you and would appreciate your comments and feedback. I'm strictly amateur and self-taught, but I hope to improve over time. Your input is greatly appreciated. I thought I'd start with my "Wild Turkey", watercolor, 2010, 16"x20". Thank you for your consideration.

Welcome aboard! That is a fantastic painting.

hi there...welcome to the best of birdforums..theres tons of talent on here, plenty of help,
hope you will stay...love the turkey & a great start...mark.

Welcome to the best bit of BF! Nice turkey, must be a thrill to see them wild.

Mike

Welcome to the forum! Great job on the big ol' tom! Hope to see more of your work here. I grew up in Pennsylvania, where Wild Turkeys were an institution - very, very wily and difficult to see, let alone hunt. They are much more common now, and are very common out here in Washington (only parts of the state) in all three subspecies even though they're not native to our state. Always a thrill to see when out in the wild, although I did have a displaying tom during breeding season chase me back into my car several times while I tried to photograph him. That bird (clearly with an evolutionary screw a bit too loose) actually was semi-famous in our area (the locals referred to him as 'Crazy Bob') for being aggressive toward people in the spring breeding season. He hung out near the administration area in Seattle's major and highly protected watershed for one year and routinely chased people coming to work into the office building or back into their car, even drawing blood on one person's leg when they arrived wearing shorts one day. I met 'Bob' when I was driving through the watershed doing a monthly volunteer bird survey that I did for them over a several year period.

Great story, JT. I appreciate all the nice comments. For more of my artwork, refer to the post titled "Wildlife Art of Missouri." Take care.

Nice work and a warm welcome to BF again