This is a little rough around the edges and lacks some physical accuracy but it does capture the atmosphere of a hot spring bath I visited last weekend.
The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is the smallest and least common of the UK's three species of woodpecker. It is most often found in the tops of trees where it creeps along branches in search of insects. Found in England, but rare in the north. Absent from Scotland and Ireland. Its 'drumming' is much quieter and less vigorous than that of the Great Spotted Woodpecker; its presence is often only given away by this or their call.
The lesser spotted woodpecker is small in size, being not much bigger than a house sparrow. Males are black and white, with a red crown cap, and females are plain black and white. They both have a distinctive white ladder marking down their black back.
**Did you know?**
There are now believed to be less than 3,000 pairs breeding annually in the UK compared to nearly 45,000 greater spotted woodpeckers.
After seeing Steve McQueen in "Cycle World" magazine and then in the "Great Escape" I was a huge fan. This is a digital rendering of the man. Missing him!
(0.5 pen on 160mm x 125mm paper) This was a piece I recently did to mark my entrance into the mad world of NFTs after I created an account on OpenSea and uploaded work on there. I'll be auctioning some of them off to see if I can gain Ethereum for them. So, if you use Ethereum as a crypto-currency, do give my work a look: https://opensea.io/SkavArt
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
