Nature Space (And Yelling)

Some more photos of my first big sgraffito'd bird ladies (in greenware mode - the raven I plan to glaze with blue/green translucent celadons to mimic the iridescence of actual ravens, the loon will just get a clear glaze once she's bisqued)!

The common loon is a commission for a friend, and I'm hoping to have time to sculpt two more raven ladies because I think a three-raven photoshoot would be really cool (& also they'll end up in my shop...or at least two of them will). This raven lady can hold a few stems of dried flowers/foliage or maybe some special feathers for her spellcasting :)

I don't remember whether I updated here with the result of the Loon Lady's firing (or the fact the person who commissioned her also asked for a Loon Chick to fit in her basket!) - if not, here she is!

PARENT BUS PARENT BUS

WHERE ARE THEY GOOOOOING

ON A FAMILY VACATIOOOOON

The last picture is, in fact, a duckling! The parents lost their baby and adopted an orphaned duckling and raised it.

FAMILY VACATION

From the Wikipedia page on loons

loons’ legs are positioned so far back on their bodies that they are incapable of standing or walking on land

in fact one major cause of death is from them mistaking wet pavement for bodies of water and trying to land on it, causing them to be stranded and vulnerable because they can’t take flight or move beyond a weird scooting crawl

Is it possible if (somehow) someone encountered one in that situation to help it picking it up and hold it high in the air? Would it be able to take flight then?? Like if you just hold it up?

No—they have to have a sufficiently large watery runway to get up to speed for takeoff. If you find one away from water, you could take it to a rehabber since it may have been stranded for a while and starving or injured, but they’ve really got to be released on lakes, huge ponds, or wide, slow-moving rivers.

like look at this shit

Can confirm -- Loons are the weirdest creatures. When I was a Naturalist living at a Raptor Rehab center they took one in because it had "landed" in a hot parking lot. It stayed overnight and I was greeted at Lunch to, "DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE LOON IN OUR TUB???" and of course I was like, "...HELL YEAH!"

aw man I’d kill a man to see a loon in a tub :(

lest we all think poorly of loons, remember that they are water birds adapted for diving, at which they are extremely good:

and unlike penguins, they can still fly! 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

So: in Canada, there are many lakes. Loons can land in small lakes but they cannot take off from small lakes. This makes small lakes a loon valve, and at equilibrium they accumulate loons.

There is a job in canada for a guy who goes around to the loon trap lakes, gathers the stranded loons, and moves them to a takeoff-compatible body of water.

the loon harvester, the loonbus, the loon collector

I take it back, loons are an evolutionary mistake, because that’s a stupid as hell problem for a bird to have and stellar diving adaptations do not make up for Lake To Small Syndrome.