Lesser Spotted Woodpecker painting for KNNR newsletter

Since I adopted Kings Norton Nature Reserve as my local patch last October, I've made contact with various lovely people from the Friends of Kings Norton Nature Reserve and their committee. Recently their Chairman Phil Evans asked if I would mind writing an article for their next newsletter about my birding experiences so far at the reserve. Of course I was happy to contribute - it would be a nice opportunity to put something back into the reserve that I have already got a lot of enjoyment from.

Phil asked me to provide some photos with the article I wrote; although I've got plenty of scenes of the reserve, I don't really have any good ones of birds I've seen there, so I decided to do a painting instead of my favourite sighting at KNNR so far - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. It's done in my usual preferred medium of watercolours; I'm pretty happy with how the woodpecker himself has turned out, but I am not so good at backgrounds (I've had less practice, and find them so much less interesting to paint than lovely birds!). I kind of ran out of time a bit so the tree trunk isn't looking as good as I would have liked! I think I could probably improve it with a bit more work but the newsletter deadline is here so the image and article have been sent off, and I am a bit more excited about starting on the next painting to be honest :o)

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker watercolour painting.