Crowing - and Hatch, NM

Crowing /  Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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CROWS ARE SMART. When we moved in, here in Wachapreague, there was some sort of antenna tower sitting on a square of concrete in the back yard. 

One morning while I was out in the studio painting, I heard a persistent sort of cracking noise, and looked up to see a crow sitting on top of the tower, tossing pecans down through the center, so they would hit the concrete and crack. Then the crow could open them relatively easily. 

An article in a science journal in 2014 found that your average crow is about as smart as a 7-year-old child. The scientists gave six wild crows a series of tasks involving water displacement. The crows had to figure out how to get bits of floating food, by dropping heavy objects into a tube filled with water. The heavy things would displace enough water to bring the floating food up high enough that the crows could reach it. 

Seven-year-old child? I am not sure that this 63-year-old so-called adult would have figured out that I could get the food by dropping something heavy into the water. Sheesh. But sometimes I think the car is smarter than I am. 

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Hatch, NM / Oil on black canvas / 16x20 / $435 including shipping

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PLEASE REMEMBER my landscape-painting workshop, Saturday at 1 p.m., on Facebook. It's free, it will be easy and I think it will be fun! Set up with your computer, something to paint on and something to paint with. We will be painting a landscape a little like the one above.

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Thought for the Day

"She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. 

And birds fluttered around her, writing 'yes' in the sky." 

- Monique Duval