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MBoulad — View from the end
Published: 2006-03-14 12:51:42 +0000 UTC; Views: 949; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 80
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Description
Australian magpie, a type of butcherbird.Related content
Comments: 29
this is awesome! Such deviousness and intelligence so well portrayed! Magpies are incredibly interesting birds. Great job.
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Thank you 
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really awesome work, I love the style of colouring you have used!
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Thanks, it was fun trying out a new kind of media on this
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Magpies Rock!!!! 
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They ARE pretty cool, aren't they? Ours are a bit creepy in some ways, but they're really quite amazing birds...and very intelligent!
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Interesting looking bird! I love crows. I've always felt quite partial to them. I think it would look great if you used some more of the background colours on the actual bird.
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I like the way you blended the colors, it makes the bird look very real.
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Great colours... it looks like he's looking straight at you! 
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Thank you
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I really like the colours in this, thelighting makes it a little different but that just adds. nice work
2 years ago when I used to walk to and from school there was this magpie that always swooped me.... untill one day he flew into the fance I walked along.. haha he never did it again (its bad enough when 10 minutes later you have them damn plover bird (I think) attacking you too, I started carrying a huge stick.....and its along a highway)
also the eyes look really cool.
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They're wicked birds sometimes aren't they...sorry you were swooped. I heard a child in Melbourne was hurt badly by one recently 
I don't know plover birds...maybe we don't have them here in the ACT? Gee, I don't envy you. Sounds like the movie The Birds where you live
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Yep, they look kinda evil too
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Divebombers! Now that is scary
But having them eat from you're hand sounds cool
Feeding the devil, lol
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Beautiful bird beautifully painted.........why is he called, or what precisely is a butcher bird?
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Thanks
There are several types of butcherbirds in Australia, the Aussie magpies are the most common and widespread. I think they're called butcherbirds because of their large heavy bills...they stab at insects and small reptiles to take them apart before eating them. We have a family that come to our back porch and sing for food. They even stab apart bits of food we feed them like they're trying to kill it-- it's kind of funny to watch them work over a piece of lunch meat like it's something dangerous. Maybe it's an instinct that serves to protect them from the spiders we have here? I'm not sure. We do have some intimidating spiders
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Isn't there one spider that will attack if you're in the vicinity even if you aren't moving toward it or threatening it in anyway, and very poisonous, too?
I would guess it is an instinctive habit in eating. It may also help to break the food up for gobbling in addition to thoroughly killing the meal? I don't like spiders, I'm sorry to say. Watched the Incredibly Shrinking Man when I was young. Scared the bejeebers out of me.
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I bet you're thinking of the Sydney funnel web...EW. Nasty critters. I haven't seen one yet (counting my lucky stars) But I've seen some other really big oogly kinds. I've actually become rather fond of huntsmen, they're big but pretty calm and they aren't dangerous. There's one in our garage that we call Gertrude, she comes out to sit on the wall and watch us when we work out there. If you walk across the room she turns to watch, I'm not exaggerating! I've never seen a spider do that before!
The Incredible Shrinking Man sounds like it would HAVE to have a spider scene
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No, I didn't like that scene in Harry Potter, or the one in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam were fighting the big spider whatever her name was.
I once saw a huge spider, for Kentucky, that was out int the grass, looked like tree bark and turned with me and watched every more I made. It was very scary to be watched like that by a predator, even a small one. It was, from tip of leg to tip of leg about 3" across.
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It's strange to have a spider LOOK at you, isn't it?! I'd lived my entire life assuming they were incapable of noticing us in that way. It makes you wonder just how much intelligence they have, and what they're thinking. Our huntsman doesn't seem to have any ill intent, just curiosity. It's always struck me how she/he comes out of hiding just to sit and stare at us like that, turning this way and that as we pass by to keep an eye on us. Why doesn't she just stay hidden? That's what gets me...she wants to see what's up!
3" is a pretty big spider for your neck of the woods! Our huntsman is probably a little bigger than that; I think she's a shield huntsman (I looked it up once...I think that was it!)
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It IS strange. It was rather scary too. Doing so suggests that they aren't afraid of us. It is interesting that your spider doesn't just hide. He or she must be curious which raising the interesting thought that an insect or in this case and arachnid can be 'curious'. It rather suggests personality and individuality. Obviously she's harmless, or he.
It was the largest spider I had seen. My mother, at the time lived at the foot of a tree covered 'mountain' hill. (appalachia) and not far from my grandfather's old barn. As I said it looked like tree bark. It may have been very old or it may have been one of kind I saw when we moved to TN last summer. We were out looking at some land to be auctioned, and walking down the road to see how one might push a drive into any of the lots when I saw a spider about 2" in the road and looking like tree bark. It was the color of the road and I didn't see it until I was almost on it. Yikes. Needless to say I spent the rest of the time dividning my attention between the lots, which were horribly steep and the road around my feet!
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I don't blame you for being nervous! I'm quite nervous about walking barefoot around the house, and always check the children's bedrooms for spiders at bedtime. And I'm not even a spider hater...just cautious!
I grew up in the ozarks, I bet we had many similar flora and fauna to yours. Never saw a spider like that, though! Hey, maybe it will be inspiration some time when you need a 'beast' to draw
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I think it was some kind of woodland spider. We have brown recluses in TN. I haven't seen one, I don't think, but I do keep an eye for them due to the seriousness of their bite. It pays to be cautious of any hazards, especially if you have children. It amazes me how some people just seems to assume that everything will always be okay. It probably keeps them from worrying, but it also seems that they don't seem to take precautions, like keeping the kiddies out of the street. I'm not sure I'll ever draw a spider, but maybe, mother said I used to draw their webs as a child.
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I used to be terrified of brown recluses...mainly because I didn't know what they actually looked like LOL! Everytime I saw a spider I'd be afraid that's what it was.
Yes, I worry an awful lot about the kids. It's hard not to, and there are so many things to worry about that you can't really DO anything about. I guess that's why I'm over viligent about those things I CAN do something about
Hehe...you drew spider webs? Me too. It's fun because of the pattern. My first drawing obsession was bees though; when I went to kindegarten my teacher was very upset that I refused to draw anything else. She sent a note home that there was something wrong, I didn't know how to draw anything ("anything normal" was probably what she meant lol!), so my dad set me down and taught me how to draw a face in proportion with lines to plot the features and the whole shebang. I still remember the picture he drew. I guess that was the start for me...at 4
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Well, I know brown recluses come out at night, like to hide in clothes and shoes and boxes during the day, have a fiddle like pattern on their back, and according to some pics I found on the internet can be different sizes, I guess depending on how old they are?
My first lesson came when I was 7. My sister taught me how to mix brown paint for a tree I was painting. She was 12 at the time. But I 'drew' from the age of 3 or 4? Daddy would give me little pads of paper to draw on during church service to keep me quiet. I remember quite liking it. I would never have thought about trying to teach a 4 year old any guidelines to drawing faces. You were precocious! Boy, do I feel like going back to bed!
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Drawing in church
I'm glad I don't have to worry about brown recluses anymore, but I seem to have traded them for other nasties. They don't actually kill people, though, do they?
Hmmm...I just looked at what I wrote as the parent for your reply...did I actually spell vigilant as ......? viligent. *cough...wheeze!* that's so funny, I must have been tired when I wrote that. Excuses, excuses. My spelling is so bad!
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Do you mean do the brown recluses kill people? No, just potentially make really bad wounds that are really hard to heal and may leave a big huge sink hole where ever. On line I read of one lady that had gotten into the shower, and I guess when she was getting out? looked down and saw a large one on her ankle. It bit her and she ended up loosing her foot. They just have really nasty posion that dissolves tissue and is hard to fight. Most often tough I think they just cause a sore that is slow to healing and spreads for awhile before it does.
Hehe, I didn't even notice the spelling. The letters are all there and I guess my brain just reassembled them.
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