Flamingos

I have seen flamingos several times in bird parks and zoos, but I had always understood that they were native to some far-flung and exotic continent, like Africa perhaps, or one of the Americas. So it was quite a surprise to see them in the wild on the coast near Montpelier. I know they are normally gregarious birds who flock together by the hundreds, but these three seemed to be relative loners – maybe their feed is spread rather sparsely in these Mediterranean lagoons. The bird in the foreground which photo-bombed my original picture might be an egret, but not being an expert ornithologist (nor indeed an ornithologist of any sort!) I can’t be certain.

I continue to enjoy the process of painting with palette knives – the process of spreading a thick layer of viscous paint can be rather sensual, and the approach of mixing colours directly on the paper (as I did in places here) is quite high risk but pleasing when it works. It turns out that a palette knife is not the ideal tool with which to paint a flamingo in detail (who knew!) but with the clue from the title of this post you can probably work out what they are supposed to be anyway. 🙂