Formal Wear at Sunset

(Black-necked Stilts)

I really do love Stilts. They are so elegant as adults and so comical as hatchlings. They are precocial (Why do scientists use words you can’t get your mouth around?). Precocial means they are able to stand and even feed themselves immediately upon hatching. They may wobble around on their ridiculously long legs for the first 24 hours, but then they are in complete control—fuzzy ping-pong balls dancing around on soda straws.

Mom and dad, who took turns incubating their eggs, move them away from their nest to brooding areas where they continue to provide protection from predators through animated distractions and also from dangerously rising temperatures on the marshland. Parents wet their belly feathers and then stand with wings partially raised, beaks into the wind, providing not only shade for their chicks but also humidified air. How many thousands of years did it take for that behavior to evolve?

I return to this painting often. It  just seems so peaceful, even during  troubled times. Hard to say why it has such a soothing effect on me. When I think about it, I know it came together easily. Form and colors flowed with little thought and time slipped by unnoticed. Maybe the attraction I feel comes more from the act of painting rather than from the final ink on canvas.