A friend gave me a notepad that was distributed by The American Lung Association and which featured three paintings of birds. All were "colorful" and two were eminently familiar: Northern Cardinal (the state bird of everywhere) and Blue Jay. But there was a third bird that I couldn't identify (none of the three birds were identified by name.) That's this one in the picture above. I pored through field guide after field guide and even pinged my mentor, Mark Johns, and identification still remains a mystery. If this bird exists in nature, it must do so on another continent. So what is going on? if the designer(s) of the notepad needed colorful birds as subject matter, why not be authentic to nature and pick a Northern Oriole, or Scarlet Tanager, or one of the woodland warblers? Did he/she/they really need to invent a bird? My conclusion is that this notepad is the result of styling. Perhaps the artist decided a Chickadee, say, was cute, but just not pretty enough. And an "enhancement" was provided. Let's hope not, and that someone came across a bird that's out there, somewhere, in lands unknown to me. What a great lost teaching moment: good illustrations of real birds with species name would have brought a lot to the party. Sorry, ALA. Stylin' just doesn't cut it.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Stylin' With Birds
A friend gave me a notepad that was distributed by The American Lung Association and which featured three paintings of birds. All were "colorful" and two were eminently familiar: Northern Cardinal (the state bird of everywhere) and Blue Jay. But there was a third bird that I couldn't identify (none of the three birds were identified by name.) That's this one in the picture above. I pored through field guide after field guide and even pinged my mentor, Mark Johns, and identification still remains a mystery. If this bird exists in nature, it must do so on another continent. So what is going on? if the designer(s) of the notepad needed colorful birds as subject matter, why not be authentic to nature and pick a Northern Oriole, or Scarlet Tanager, or one of the woodland warblers? Did he/she/they really need to invent a bird? My conclusion is that this notepad is the result of styling. Perhaps the artist decided a Chickadee, say, was cute, but just not pretty enough. And an "enhancement" was provided. Let's hope not, and that someone came across a bird that's out there, somewhere, in lands unknown to me. What a great lost teaching moment: good illustrations of real birds with species name would have brought a lot to the party. Sorry, ALA. Stylin' just doesn't cut it.
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3 comments:
Bravo!! I am willing to bet you are the only person who got the notepad who even suspected (as you did immediately) that this wasn't a real bird! You gotta wonder at what point the artist crossed over into playing God. Somehow I suspect a committee was involved! : ) Can't you hear it - "This bird is too plain. Can't he be a little prettier?" YIKES!
The bird on the ALA pad is a Bullfinch, Pyrrhula pyrrhula - a wonderful species that I've seen in England many times. Such is the danger of companies buying stock photography without giving thought to where the product upon which they are putting the image will be distributed. Last year I actually received a sheet of mailing labels from the Audubon Society, of all groups, depicting mostly Eurasian species.
Denise, thanks for the thoughts! but, I guessed wrong. :-D
John---THANK YOU for providing the ID and setting the record straight. I freely admit I am utterly unaware of the rest of the world--and lack the right field guides.
I stand on one point. Would it have killed anyone to identify the birds by name on the pad?
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