As I grew up in suburban London as a young girl, I developed an interest for the wildlife around me. I became fascinated that in this urban landscape of tarmac and brick, birds and animals lived happily alongside. We had a small garden and my mother would throw left-over scraps of bread out for the ubiquitous sparrow and on Sundays she'd leave out on the lawn our discarded chicken carcass until all the garrulous neighbourhood starlings had picked it bare. Birds for me in my urban landscape for the most part were made up of these commonplace, noisy squarking avians, and of course pigeons.
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| © 2014 Angela Cutler. Sing for the Sun. Pencil, acrylic and oil pastel on paper. |
Being the yougest of three children and a girl, I wasn't allowed out as much as my older brothers, I seem to remember that a lot of my time was spent gazing out of the windows at the world outside that was denied me. One of my brother's had an ever-changing hobby interest and for a short while he joined a respected UK birding organisation and became a 'RSPB Young Ornathologist', and it was quite a responsibility to have a hobby that consisted of five syllables at the age of ten! So rather than lobbing scraps on to the lawn, he made a bird table and made very serious notes of all the different varieties of birds that visited our garden...which as noted above was quite a small repertoire.
