Coooooo-eeeeee! I'm back!

Hi everyone!

So I'm finally back after months away from Blogland. It wasn't intentional. I don't really know why except I just lost the urge to blog or post in my Social Media platforms. I don't like Facebook so I rarely post there anyways. The state of the world and this pandemic weighed heavily on my mind.  While Australia has done reasonably well in the face of Covid19, there have been far too many losses around the world. It's heart-wrenching!  

I do need to get back into the swing of things though so here I am — finally! 

I've done a little sketching here and there but nothing worth posting.  I also managed a couple of acrylic pet portraits on paper during my absence. Aaron, my son, wants portraits of all his pets so I still have 2 more to do.

Meet Arlo, Aaron's Sun Conure

Sorry about the glare on the glass; couldn't be helped.

A few of the stages in his progress below

Arlo was painted with Acrylic Gouache on 360 gsm Acrylic art paper. 

*********************************************

Speaking of birds, the neighbourhood plovers have babies! There were 4 but sadly, there are only 3 now. Plover parents tend to inadvertently put their babies in harms way which is why their babies often don't survive. Out of four babies, they would be lucky if one makes it. The parents usually sit on the footpath beside the road and their babies go out onto the road and hang about there. Yesterday, I had to slow down two passing cars and warn them of the baby plovers on the road ahead of them. Thankfully, they slowed right down and the babies eventually moved onto the footpath beside their parents. 

The thing is that, when the plover parents see a car, they call out loudly telling their babies to hide —  and hide they do — by staying put and curling themselves up into a ball of fluff — in the middle of the road! And that seems to satisfy the parents. Thank goodness, those little baby fluff-balls didn't become flattened pancakes yesterday. I have been quite a worrywart over them whenever they are in our street. 

Not the best photo quality as it's taken from some distance away through a dusty window. Do you see the baby? Another one is nestled under the parent's tummy. You may notice the extra pair of legs if you look close enough. They were in our back yard. 

Again, not a clear pic, but this is one of the babies. It's covered in those sticky grass seeds. 

Then Miss Kya suddenly spots them and says, 

"What the heck is that?!!!"

Then settles herself on the windowsill for a closer look and some CatTV.

I'm so glad Kya is 100% indoors now otherwise I'd be a nervous wreck.

So that's it for today. I will fill you in over the coming weeks on things I did in my absence from blogging. 

Thanks to everyone who messaged and commented asking how I was. It's nice to know I was missed. I hope you all stay safe in these times of uncertainty.

On a side-note - It looks like Blogger is forcing us to use the new format. They took away the option to go back to the previous format. Not happy about that but it's a free service so I can't complain really. I'm grateful for this free blog. That said, I did try this new format a while ago and didn't like it because it was so sluggish and it took forever to upload photos. Hopefully, they've improved on it since then.