August 14, 2026

My Week in Birds ~ August Week 2

by Bridget Farmer in Studio Blog

My second week in Adelaide is coming to a close. I am here for four whole weeks on a Creative Time Fellowship with the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust. It’s an amazing opportunity and I’m thoroughly making the most of it and getting lots of work done. In between times I get out on my bike and explore. You can see more about my adventure days on the socials!

I’ve been working on a few books while here in Adelaide. One that I’m exploring is about how you normally see birds in certain numbers and that can help you identify them. For example you normally only see one brush turkey at a time, but you’d see a whole family of babblers, or a large flock of woodswallows. I’ve also been experimenting with different styles of illustration. Playing about with my new found favourites - oil pastels. Watch this space...!

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August 21, 2026

My Week in Birds ~ August Week 3

My third week in Adelaide is coming to a close. I’ve been working on a new book in the Bush Birds and Beach Birds series this week. I think I’ve just about nutted out the text, then the illustration designing shall begin. In between my writing days I’m managing adventure days still. Last weekend two birding friends who live in the hills took me out birding. It was wonderful and made everything feel a bit more familiar again after living these last few weeks in an urban environment! You can see more about my SA adventures in my socials!I finally saw an Adelaide rosella this week! I was on my bike cycling back from a super market trip and I spotted it over a high stone wall in an overgrown vacant lot. I stood on my tippytoes, holding my phone over the wall and grinning like a weirdo to get a few photos and some video footage. I believe this is a young one because it was mottled colours rather than red and blue. I saw so many wonderful birds on my birding trip last weekend, including a few firsts for me like the elegant parrot and a little grassbird. But possibly the highlight was this little fellow. He’s apparently a bit of a celeb to the birding world round here. He is a leucistic striated pardalote. Leucistic birds have missing pigments meaning they are white but still have their regular coloured eyes. This pardalote still had a smudge of yellow on his chin and that amazing orange flash on his wing and black wing markings. He was courting a female, singing away to her and she was spreading her wings back not minding in the least his unusual colourings! We saw terns at Tolderol. I’m not sure what kind because terns are difficult to tell apart and they were moving so fast. But they were small and graceful and diving into the glistening water. It was poignant watching them. So healthy, so full of life, so unaware of their cousins all getting sick and dying not far away. Will it reach them? Is it only a matter of time? Sorry to end on this gutwrenching note. I am filled with sadness and holding my breath. but I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and hope for the best.

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July 24, 2026

My Week in Birds ~ July Week 4

I’ve finally been getting out on walks again this week and oh how lovely they have been. The mist nestles into our little valley and the gentle morning sun peeks over the top. The pied currawong family has returned to town, making their distinct calls above the tree tops. It’s all beautiful. I don’t think there’s anything quite as lovely as a soft winter’s day in central Victoria, with currawongs on top! ~ I‘ve now listed the three new lithographs on my online shop, all depicting the gorgeous little zebra finches. Each one is hand coloured with oil pastels and this one above includes watercolour paint as well.I‘ve also noticed a few noisy kookaburras around town lately. They give a good old laugh at the start of my work day after I get in from my walk. They remind me of last year when I was camping at Vaughan Springs, not far from here, and I sat below a tree and drew the campsite kookaburra. I came across the sketch again recently.They’re also reminding me that this year it has been TEN years since I published my very first children’s book Kookaburra Kookaburra. Keep an eye out over the next few months because we will have a few celebration offers and bundles! In the meantime, keep well, keep warm and keep noticing xx

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