'Roseate Spoonbill'
By Riad HATTOUTI
© 2020
Oil on Canvas.
60W x  90H x 2L
 
This painting was done using premium thick body oil paint, professionally stretched canvas. Manipulated with touches of paint with both brushstrokes and knife strokes (spatula), with the fat on lean technique, sometimes I wait weeks for the base coats dry to work on it, the result is diametrically opposed to other techniques: working my paintings with knife and playing with time allowed me to develop my own writing, but it took time, work and patience.
 
This beautiful and singular bird, although a constant resident in the southern extremities of the peninsula of Florida, seldom extends its journeys in an eastern direction beyond the State of North Carolina. Indeed it is of extremely rare occurrence there, and even in South Carolina, my friend JOHN BACHMAN informs me that he has observed only three individuals in the course of twenty years. He once obtained a specimen in full plumage about ten miles north of Charleston. It is rarely seen in the interior of the country at any distance from the waters of the Atlantic, or those of the Gulf of Mexico. A specimen sent to WILSON at Philadelphia from the neighbourhood of the city of Natchez, in the State of Mississippi, appears to have lost itself, as during my stay in that section of the country I never heard of another; nor have I ever met with one of these birds farther up the Mississippi than about thirty miles from its mouths. Although rather abundant on some parts of the coast of Florida, I found it more so along the Bay of Mexico, particularly in Galveston Bay in the Texas, where, as well as on the Florida Keys, it breeds in flocks. The Spoonbills are so sensible of cold, that those which spend the winter on the Keys, near Cape Sable in Florida, rarely leave those parts for the neighbourhood of St. Augustine before the first days of March. But after this you may find them along most of the water courses running parallel to the coast, and distant about half a mile or a mile from it. I saw none on any part of the St. John's river; and from all the answers which I obtained to my various inquiries respecting this bird, I feel confident that it never breeds in the interior of the peninsula, nor is ever seen there in winter.