Home Is Where The Birds Are

Blackbird (Turdus merula)

Blackbirds are commonly found all over the UK in gardens and countryside and from coasts to hills. The ferns and lichens I layered on this cyanotype were collected from my garden walls.

I sourced the feathers from a session I attended with the bird ringing group on campus. The darker colour of The darker colour of this print was achieved using the natural dye I made by boiling down brambles from my garden and allowing the print to rest in it for eight minutes.

Buzzard (Buteo buteo)

Great numbers of buzzards can be found in every county of the UK. They are found in most habitats particularly woodland, moorland, scrub, pasture, arable, marsh bog and villages.

This meant that when foraging for items to lay over this cyanotype, I could use materials from pretty much anywhere. I decided to go for a walk through my local woodland and collected ferns, pine and lichens, as displayed in this print. 

Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)

Cuckoos can be seen throughout the UK but are especially numerous in southern and central England. Cuckoos are summer visitors and are well-known brood parasites. When researching cuckoo photography, I noticed most of the birds were photographed lower to the ground, so when I was foraging for floor. This included: gorse-like plants, grasses and a piece of fallen pine. For the dye, I used pine to get this pale brown colour that replicates the colour of this bird.

Curlew (Numenius arquata)

Curlews breed on a range of habitats, but favour grasslands, moorlands and bogs. Because this bird heavily relies on the sea for survival, I needed to find a way of incorporating it into this print. When I collected the variety of seaweeds and reeds I used for this print, when I pushed down and when I did it allowed for this incredible pattern along with some hints of yellows and purples, which I thought displayed the beauty of our coastal landscape perfectly.

Gannet (Morus bassanus)

The biggest mainland breeding colony of gannets is at the RSPB’s Bempton Cliffs. They can also be seen offshore almost anywhere, especially when they migrate south between August and September. I once again thought of incorporating the sea into this print. I laid down the print within reach of waves on the beach. I then ran it back up to a dry part of the beach where I threw on some sand and crushed up shells and some seaweed. The outcome was this gradient of blues.

Goldcrest (Regulus regulus)

Coniferous woodland or parks with large mature trees are the best places to see goldcrests. Due to this being a much smaller print because goldcrests are the UK’s smallest species of bird, I couldn’t fit much in the way of foraged items on top of it. I collected pine along with dried-out grasses. I then boiled down the pine needles and leaves from both coniferous trees I could find and the dye ended up turning him this almost golden colour.