Snowy Egret painting

Not content to ever sit still, I wander the house, putting a few brushings of paint on a painting, scanning old slides, making some of many phone calls on my to-do list, paying bills, and of course, doing client work. Out of it all I've finished a couple more paintings, one of which is the Snowy Egret shown here. To see the other new one of a Vermilion Flycatcher as well as a bunch of old ones, go to my web site (lynnbarber.com)

Boxes of books

There are boxes of books in my house, and also still in my car,just in case I am somewhere and someone says, "Oh I'd like to buy a copy of your book", and also because those boxes are heavy and I just could not get them all in the house. I have already sold a handful of books, even though I haven't begun with my scheduled book-signing events/talks. I have signed a few in addition to those sold, because the Texas A&M Press had me sign a box-full when I was there. Four of those will go to the Great Texas Birding Classic, as gift/prizes as I recall.

It's here!!!

I got an email today that my books have arrived at the publisher. Now to schedule a time to go down there and pick up boxes of them. Should I be optimistic? I can't even estimate how many friends will get one, much less strangers when I give talks about my big year. People's enthusiasm about the book may not translate into spending money for it. And they all know that they can get it a lot cheaper by ordering from Amazon or other book dealers (and I get nearly none of that). Oh well, the real point is to have lots of people buy it, because it was a wonderful year and I want people to read all about it, and see the pictures. It really would take a million years for the book sales to pay me back for the $$ spent that year.

Bald Eagle

I explored north of Rapid City today. In spite of the bright, warm (45F) day, it is still winter and few birds are around. Lapland Longspur, both Bald and Golden Eagles, a Prairie Falcon and a Ferruginous Hawk, Horned Larks, and many Sharp-tailed Grouse and a few pheasants were the main birds. The Bald Eagle was in a leafless deciduous tree along the road, and although he peered at me when I stopped and turned around and took many photos, he never flew away even though I was probably only 25 fee from him.

More about paintings

I figured out how to "shrink" the big paintings so they wouldn't take a lifetime to open, so most of my paintings are now on my website. That includes the brand new one of a Scaled Quail that I just finished, and that I'm going to post here too.

More Paintings

On my web site (www.lynnbarber.com), I have added two "paintings" pages that together have copies of many of my paintings, especially the smaller ones. Some of the larger ones were scanned commercially and need to be reduced in pixel size or something so they can be displayed on my web site. Eventually I'll figure it out. The advantage of viewing paintings on my web site, as compared to on this blog, is that larger views can be seen by clicking on the thumbnail view. I'm posting a copy of my most recent painting here.