Bird time

pencil predrawing, 2025 / digital art, 2026

The left one is the extant Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae, in fact existing since the Miocene) as part of some sketching aid during a wonderful day with my wonderful daughter last summer.

Although not doing any research in this field, I have a mysterious interest in Cenozoic birds, a mixture of birdwatching curiosity and thinking in evolution. On the right, that’s a quick piece of a hypothetical proto-shoebill. It is accepted that the hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) and the shoe-billed stork (Balaeniceps rex) from a clade within Pelecani. The question is, which came first, the trend of gigantism or specialisation in larger prey, or did the body size and beak width evolve largely parallel to each other?