Paintings of Animals & Birds

Our map illustrates a few of the many animals and birds that you commonly come across or see evidence of within our parish.

On the map you will find depicted several animals. Muntjac deer are regularly seen either on the roadside darting into the undergrowth or early in the morning visiting gardens to nibble tulips and roses! The 'bark' of the females is often heard at dusk particularly in the Autumn.

Foxes are common patrolling their territories just around dusk, on the hunt for unguarded chickens or scavenging for scraps. There is also a healthy badger population with numerous evidence of setts particularly within the beech-woods.

There is no surprise that as elsewhere in the Chilterns the grey squirrel is omnipresent, removing bark from trees or stealing nuts from the bird feeder. Hares are not as visible as most of our other mammals but particularly in the Spring or early in the day during the Summer you will see hares boxing and coxing across the open fields. Last but not least the seldom seen but often heard edible dormouse or glis glis. Introduced by the Romans and reputedly eaten by them as a delicacy the glis glis is not only to be heard chattering high up in the trees, but also scratching away in the roof space of local houses. Unfortunately, electrical cables seem to be excellent for conditioning their rodent like teeth!

We also have a flourishing bird population but have only been able to include a few of these on the map.

The barn owl is not a common sight but at least one bird is seen skirting field edges and road sides from time to time; kestrels and sparrowhawks (not included on the map) are common above our heads. The large population of voles and the young of game birds providing a constant supply of food; magpies; pheasant; long-tailed tit; goldfinch; yellow hammer and spotted woodpecker; swallow and moorhen.

Notes about the paintings

Artist - GRAHAM LINCOLN
"Because I am colour blind (red / green) the drawing of animals presented me with some problems. I used poster paint (my son helped me with the colours and the paint pots at least had names on).

Once I'd got the right colour, tone and shade selection was not a great problem. So for the map I painted a series of birds in the same style. I then tackled some animals, which I'd not done before but followed the same style. Being interested in wildlife I had no end of references from which to compose my paintings."