Water Creatures

 

For this week's Thursday Art and Dinner Date over at Rain's place the topic is "water creatures". I start with a small watercolor painting I did last year in the spring. I think it was either Sketchbook Revival or one of those Taster lessons - I really can't remember and unfortunately I also forgot the artist who was doing the lesson.

Let's continue with birds - there are so many that are found in or around the water. Here's one of my favorites - a Black-Crowned Night Heron.

But I also love Egrets and Great Blue Herons.

Only once did I see at the lake what I believe is a Wilson's Snipe.

Watching pelicans is always a joy - either the American White Pelicans inland in the winter or the Brown Pelicans at the ocean.

At the ocean of course we have lots of gulls - since I'm not good at identifying them I hope that David will help me out here.

As you can see there are also other water creatures in the left image, albeit pretty dead - freshly caught salmon in Valdez, Alaska, where we also saw very cute sea otters, but I don't have a picture of them.

Another gull with its dinner.

If it's not dinner, it looks like this:

Angry bird...

Oystercatcher on Spiekeroog, an island in the North of Germany.

And a sweet Common Ringed Plover (I think) that I saw in Ireland.

A Bald Eagle casually sailing by on an iceberg in Prince William Sound - do they still count as water creatures? They catch fish...

A very special fish - made from pumpkins! Photo courtesy of Kaefer (she took the picture at the garden show "Blühendes Barock" in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart).

But back to the ocean - harbor seals are plenty here and this year we saw more elephant seals than usual.

I shouldn't forget seastars and sea anemones - and of course shells!

The following water creature is not only found in Hawai'i and California.

But in Hawai'i you find the Green Sea Turtle and at our lake the small Pond Sliders

Here's a fun one - this one lives in the Berlin Zoo and is one of the offspring of Knautschke, a hippo  born in 1943 that survived the bombardment of the city in World War II. He died in 1988 after fathering many many little hippos; he was the darling of Berliners, and of course there is a sculpture of him near the hippo enclosure.

And look at this cute water creature! Or is it a mud creature? She was 16 months old when we took her to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Northeast Germany which is home to many lakes. She loved playing in the water and also did her first independent steps in the water (she was a late walker and very early talker).

What's for dinner? You guessed it - fish and seafood of course!