Foxes and Lapwings

As usual, things haven't turned out quite as I expected when I started thinking about my blog post for foxes. For some reason, I got drawn to the thought of how foxes and birds interact especially at this time of year when there are eggs to be found on the ground  as an easy meal for a hungry fox.  You may have seen the extraordinary display Lapwings [Vanellus vanellus]  put on to protect their nests and chicks if danger is close at hand.  We used to call them Peewits because of their call, and they are part of the Plover family.

They will try and distract the predator through noise and even attack  or try to lure them off by feigning a broken wing. I remember seeing that as a child but rarely get to see such behaviour these days although their numbers do seem to be increasing, which wouldn't be difficult as we  hardly saw any for several years.

I started off with an idea in mind of a fox being mobbed by Lapwings and drew a sketch onto my lino.

 

1st stage - Initial cutting of block to retain the white areas

 

 

2nd Stage -First hand print to check image

 

 

 

Next stage in reduction process, as Val has already mentioned, so aptly named suicide method as there's no going back!.....

 

 

2nd colour print, all done by hand using a baron so the image is quite light and textured but I like that.  Using a press produces a different kind of image, more uniform and stronger in tone which is useful but maybe not always what is required.

 

The next stage is to check whether further cutting is needed to let the light green tone show more and then I can move on to printing the final tone, black.  All very anxiety inducing but also wonderful because you just never know how it's going to turn out!