Birds, Art, and Interior Design

My fascination with birds goes back as long as my memories. This is an intaglio print of a nest from my collection done for a printmaking class at the Glassell School of Art.

Birdwatching here in the Texas Hill Country is endlessly fascinating. Bird song fills the air and in fact, we have a mockingbird who sits on the top of our chimney and sings, his call amplified by the chimney and heard throughout our house. The birds here go about their lives, creating nests and raising their young in close proximity all around us. This is one of a few nests we have saved after the young birds have grown and flown away. The nests can be seen from all angles under these glass cloches on wooden stands kept in the mahogany cabinet in our library.

Along with each nest is a small card giving the details about the birds and their domicile. This one belonged to a family of Lesser Goldfinches who built their nest deep inside the jasmine vines trained on a stone wall in our courtyard. We watched the birds go in and out of the vines and we left some scraps of lace for them on the ground below. The lace was incorporated into their nest and so, a little bit of us was with them!

(John J. Audubon: Drawing of the Great Carolina Wren)

We have two kalonchoe beharensis plants in pots on our loggia;
commonly known as elephant’s ear kalonchoe or felt bush. I saw them first in a photo of the garden in front of Isabel Marant’s shop in Los Angeles and searched for them for four years before finding them at Lowe’s garden center.

To the story…for several days we saw dirt strewn about on the equipale table where one of the plants was placed. Then one day we saw a tiny bird with a slender pointed beak and a creamy, yellowish breast swoop into the pot and then back out. We waited a few minutes and went to peek inside the pot where we saw the beginnings of a deep indentation being filled with tiny twigs. We decided not to water the plant for fear of disturbing the nest. I clipped pieces of fabric and lace and laid them on the ground around the table. These were incorporated into the nest! Much more attractive than the insulation, plastic chip bags, and labels the birds find plentiful at nearby home construction sites. Pale salmon color eggs with brownish freckles were laid. After a few weeks we could see the heads of the baby birds. Three of them crowded into the nest waiting hungrily for their parents who flew back and forth feeding them.

Most amazing of all the same kind of birds returned the next year and made a nest in the exact same pot!

Here is an illustration of a wild turkey made by John James Audubon (more about him later). While working in the garden here in the Hill Country you can sometimes hear wild turkeys calling to one another. One day while struggling with digging up a dead bush sage plant my work was interrupted by a loud fluttering sound and a dozen or so wild turkeys burst out of the underbrush on the hill across the street and flew overhead. Never had I seen anything like it!

A few days later we were having coffee in our bedroom and looked out the window and across the arroyo to see a young turkey perched on the edge of our neighbor’s roof peering at the ground below. Every few minutes he would flap his wings and then pause, going nowhere. He had evidently flown up there and was intent on figuring out a way to get back on the ground.

These cardinals by Audubon remind me of our cardinals. It is said cardinals mate for life. We have such an abundance of cardinals here it seems to me they have remained here along with their offspring. It is a sweet sight to see a male cardinal bringing a bit of food to his mate who sits on the nest.

One day we looked out our living room window to see a pair of cardinals in one of our redbud trees. There was another cardinal on the ground below. Apparently, the birds were trying to teach their offspring how to fly from the ground and land on a branch in the tree. Over and over each parent would fly to the ground, give the young one a nudge as if to say “Watch me, This is how you do it!” and then fly up and land on a branch. The young cardinal struggled and tried many times, often landing on the rosemary bush below the tree and looking up into the crown of the tree above. Eventually he made it and we were excited to have witnessed this important moment in bird life.

At this moment there are a pair of cardinals nesting in a Texas Laurel tree just below our loggia. We can watch them when we sit outside at the table. This is the third year in a row cardinals have built a nest in this tree and in the same position in the tree. Each year they break down the old nest and build anew!

When making our landscape plan the key search words were “drought tolerant, deer resistant, attracts bees, butterflies, and birds”. Black-chinned and ruby throated hummingbirds are frequent visitors to the garden. In the morning we can see them darting up and down, in and out of the blooming chaste tree outside our window.

One afternoon while having a cup of tea at a little table in the garden and talking with my sister on the phone a hummingbird buzzed in and visited each blossom of the salvia greggi white plants surrounding me. The bird was completely undisturbed by my presence and came close in as if to study me as I was studying it!

Hummingbirds often go inside the open garage door of my husband’s woodworking studio attracted by the mustard yellow equipment. Once inside they cannot find the way out. The hummingbirds will cling to the window frame when they have tired themselves out. My husband takes a long wooden dowel and holds it nearby. The bird will then hop onto the dowel and take a ride with him to the open door and back out into the world. He has assisted a number of hummingbirds this way.

Years ago on a trip to London we bought four bird prints from a table of prints in the Portabello Market in the Notting Hill neighborhood. These were the first of many such prints. We were soon searching for ornithological and botanical illustrations wherever we went. The original four hang in pairs over chests on either side of our bed.

A close-up of the lorius domicellus or purple capped lorry.  This is one of several ornithological illustrations hanging above my dressing table.

(John James Audubon painted in 1826 by John Syme)

In April of 2025 we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science where they had an exhibit on the works of John James Audubon, a French-American artist, naturalist, and ornithologist best known for his Birds of America.

There, in a glass case was an original, leather- bound book, Birds of America.

This is another copy of the book, open and placed in a wooden box with inlaid wood decorations.

These are close-up photos made of the swan and raven’s heads.

Interestingly, Audubon focused on painting the birds in naturalistic positions and left the painting of the surrounding vegetation/scene to other artists with whom he partnered.  

Wanting to know more about Audubon and his life and work, my current reading includes Audubon as Artist: A New Look at The Birds of America, a beautiful and well researched book by Roberta J.M. Olson. What starts with a love of the sound of birds becomes a lifelong interest!