Roll of honour

So, I have started back at uni this week. My tutor has been great so far, helpful and insightful and I like the studio I am in, so that is all good. We are currently doing a project on colour - how that will pan out I am not sure at this stage - but my initial thought was to have birds scavenging as my theme. I think this arose because I like to watch birds fly as I sit at my favourite spot at the Crags and look across at the city and the ocean. I am often envious of the freedom they have and think how fun it must be to eddy and swirl on the air currents (although on very windy days in Edinburgh I wonder if this a complete nightmare for them or whether it is like being on a roller coaster ride!). I thought of the other side last week though - the daily risk and danger of death by predators (humans included) and starvation. And today because there was a weather warning I was unable to go to the place I wanted to go to take photos of birds but went to the National Museum instead. I don't particularly like looking at stuffed animals, it makes me think of death and how these animals were once alive and the birds in particular - how they once felt the air beneath them and they felt keenly alive. I think it is good for educational purposes, but it also saddens me. Anyway, they had an extinctions role of honour from 1623 until 2010 and in the year I was born a bird became extinct - the Eiao monarch (Scientific name Pomaera fluxa). Some information on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says "This species was endemic to the island of Eiao, French Polynesia, but is now Extinct, probably thanks to introduced predators. It was last recorded in 1977, and in 1987 a search failed to find it". I keep seeing this image in my mind of this little bird searching and not being able to find a friend, a mate, that could understand it, alone, afraid. And then one day it dies too. How horrible to have that happen. And I feel that they are voiceless - people complain about the noise that birds make - but have we made them voiceless? I don't know. Tomorrow we have a screen printing induction so we need to have a black and white image to work with. I took these today and tried to make them as dark as I could.