The Corridors of Migration

All of the images under New Work: Ornithology 2015-2017 were made in honor of the feathered ones who inhabit the places along the corridors of migration in New Mexico where I reside, the flyways of the Rocky Mountains and the middle Rio Grande.  The image of the wings of a Sandhill crane were painted from actual wings, found in a migratory sanctuary lying in a field like the wings of an angel.  They were attached to a clean breast bone, but no other signs of the bird were in plain sight.  I came upon them walking through a field just at the end of winter’s sleep, in February, after the Sandhill cranes flew north for their spring mating rituals. Emptied of the magnificent flocks of snow geese and cranes, I was somewhat forelorn that the cranes had gone, when I came upon the wings of a Sandhill crane.

Sandhill cranes, (vulernable to loss of habitat and degradation of habitat at major stop over points during migration), a Great-horned Owl, and the wings of a Barn Owl were each painted from the remains of life.

Please click the link at left for New Work: Ornithology, 2015-2017, to see more images.

 http://deborahgavel.squarespace.com/ornithology/

Collateral damage in the eco-system*

Some scientists say birds are more resilient to the perils along the Rio Grande and elsewhere because they can fly above the fray.  But they have to land at some point and within reach of a nurturing healthy habitat.  I found a Barn Owl, Genus Tyro, family Tytonidae, along the 1-25 freeway, in the breakdown lane, with one wing moving in the wind as if it might be waving. It had been very windy the night prior, perhaps it had been hit by a vehicle or crushed by high winds while hunting in the orchard above. The size of it, Its heart-shaped face and large dark eyes reminded me of a human infant’s face framed with a ruffle of lace.

We live in complexity. We consider city infrastructure as “normal;” the result of industrialization and militarization that cannot easily be turned backward on the calendar of our evolution.  There are consequences to our destructive behaviors, to our lack of mindfulness in nature.  On personal levels as well as in the macrocosm and the microcosm of nature, we are all effected by environmental destruction.  All plants, animals and minerals are part of the same earth space.  So much “collateral damage” is the consequence of our seeming inability to walk on earth in equanimity.*  

Just as the bones of our bodies, and the bodies of all living beings, are joined to make the whole functioning organism, so mirrors the larger body of Mother Earth.  We inhabit a system that is conjoined, so to speak, to each and everything through the shared existence of our mother ship’s atmosphere.

* “Collateral damage” see Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions.