Picture Profile: 1106 Pearly King and Queen. (Great Crested Grebes)

1106 Pearly King and Queen. (Great Crested Grebes, Podiceps cristatus, amongst Amphibious bistort, Polygonum amphibium)

1106 Pearly King and Queen. (Great Crested Grebes)

Artist Code: 1106. Completed July 2011. Original SOLD. Water colour on Aquarelle Arches 100% hot pressed cotton rag paper. Unframed size 12” x 16”. Framed size 22” x 18”

This painting was selected for the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art (NEWA 2012). Sold at the Spring Exhibition, Natural World Art Group (NWAG), Banham Zoo, April 2013.

Featured on the Publicity Poster for the Association of Animal Artists’ Exhibition, at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Martin Mere, Martin Mere Wetland Centre, Burscough, Lancashire L40 0TA, from 3 December 2013 to 23 February 2014.

Poster for Martin Mere WWT Exhibition

Poster for Martin Mere WWT Exhibition

Great Crested Grebes, Podiceps cristatus, amongst Amphibious bistort, Polygonum amphibium.

Resource material: A “right place, right time” event. My husband and I were staying at Top Lodge Caravan site (Fineshade, Corby, Northamptonshire NN17 3BB—the BBC’s “Middlemarch” was filmed here) and walked around the nature reserve. We stumbled upon a hide and whilst admiring and snapping the wildlife another couple sauntered in. We got talking and discovered that they were professional photographers. I mentioned that we had been out recently on a caravan rally and had taken some pictures of grebes, but that they were not very good because the birds were distant. I was treated to several beautiful photographs on their camera and my grateful thanks go out to Jan and Andy of Jandy Photography for letting me use their beautiful imagery, and to Paul Mason for his fabulous stuffed resource ‘Grebey’.

Poem

Pearly King and Queen
With swirling rhythm, flicking heads
They court and dance on bistort beds
As bubbles spray and sprinkle pearls
Golden neck plumes shine in whorls
Soon the babes on backs will ride
Stripey fluff-balls, sunnyside!

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