Yellow-eyed Hawk - Colored Pencil Drawing

"Yellow-eyed Hawk" Colored Pencil

Finding your place in the world today can be a challenge but this bird of prey is more than well-equipped to thrive in the wild. An eastern red-tailed hawk stares confidently out of a blazing, autumn background. After two years of age, the extraordinary yellow eyes of this juvenile will transform into a dark brown.

Raptor vision has evolved to become the sharpest in the Animal Kingdom. The visual acuity of the hawk is legendary. Using its excellent eyesight to find and capture its prey, a red-tail can spot a rabbit from two miles away. Large eyes allow for maximum levels of light so the retinal picture is composed from a greater number of optical cells resulting in a higher resolution image.

The hawk has front facing eyes that give it binocular vision which is assisted by a double fovea. With binocular vision, the fields of view of the left and right eye overlap. This binocularity allows for stereoscopic vision, which in turn provides for spectacular long distance perception.

A fovea is a small area of acute vision in the retina where the concentration of visual cells is the most intense. We have one fovea while a hawk, with its wide binocular field of view, has both a central and lateral fovea. That's one reason why a hawk can see eight times more clearly than even the sharpest human eye.

The hawk's adaptations for intensified visual resolution has come at a cost though. The huge eyes occupy a substantial portion of the skull allowing only limited room for the brain. Also, it has a poor range of view in low light levels so the bird must roost at night.

My impression of the red-tailed hawk is that despite those limitations, the tradeoff appears to have worked out just fine. As you can plainly see, the future for the young raptor pictured above certainly appears to be bright.

Comments

  1. judi December 5, 2013 at 3:59 AM

    Beautiful job Dan. The drawing is spectacular - I love the texture on the wings and the body and the eyes are looking right through me! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dan MillerDecember 5, 2013 at 11:44 PM

      Thanks Judi, and thanks for letting me use your photo for reference. I've never been able to get such good images of a hawk. I enjoyed the process and learned a lot from working on the piece.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lair O' the Bear and Dunafon Castle

Image
The restored Dunafon Castle Lair O' the Bear Park is nestled in a steep canyon about six miles east of Evergreen, Colorado. John and Matilda Johnson emigrated from Sweden with their two young boys and purchased the narrow meadow in 1902. They named it Mountain Nook Ranch, built a four-bedroom house and raised Red Durham cattle. Their two sons, Finis and Francis, attended school in nearby Starbuck, now known as Idledale. It was originally named for John Starbuck who won the town property in a poker game. John Johnson was a master gardener and his popular, fresh produce was sold in Evergreen and Denver. They planted over 200 cherry and apple trees in the area. If you look closely many can still be found throughout the park today. The unruly Bear Creek sculpted the beautiful scenery and provided the needed irrigation for productive crops but it also wreaked plenty of havoc. There was a constant fear of extreme flooding. The Lariat Trail (Highway 74 today) crossed Bear Creek s...
Read more

Ibis - A Symbol for Danger and Optimism

Image
White Ibis The white ibis is a wading bird that is very common throughout Florida. Their traditional habitat has always been the Everglades but they've recently adapted to a more urban environment. During our visit there this past summer, we frequently saw ibises on freshly mowed lawns rooting for large bugs as well as stalking aquatic prey along the shoreline of ponds, lakes and marshes. These splendid, white birds have evolved a long, downward-curved bill. This distinctive feature has helped them develop into efficient hunters. Their legs are long enough to wade in shallow water but they are also perfectly at home on dry land where they can use their pink beak to probe for insects. The white ibis is a symbol for danger and optimism because Native American folklore held that the bird was the last to seek shelter before a hurricane and the first to emerge afterwards.
Read more

An Approaching Storm - Colored Pencil Drawing

Image
"An Approaching Storm" Colored Pencil In the midst of an already grievous winter, an approaching storm gradually extinguishes the landscape’s last sliver of light. The inclement weather rushes in aggressively as it envelopes the magnificent range of rugged peaks. Extending across the page, a strip of turquoise sky is still visible above the embattled scenery. It won’t be long, though, before a cloak of cool-gray smothers the valley in a shroud of deep snow. The high mountains assume a defiant posture as their sharp edges tear through the soft atmosphere, creating patches of bare rock. The kaleidoscope of broken terrain sparkles in blue-violet before the impending storm’s onset. The forested foothills are distinguished by three different, overlapping tiers of conifers. As the woodland ramparts recede into the distance, the wintery colors gradually become several shades bluer. The wide, white meadow sweeps across the foreground, its smooth surface decorated with elongated shado...
Read more