One of the first birds I can remember ever seeing was the Pileated Woodpecker that came into our wooded yard where I grew up, and it’s fair to say that this is the “spark bird” which set me onto a life of birds. The gradation of color in the background from the dark forest green almost obscuring the body of the bird, to the pale yellow at the top of the painting is used to show upward movement and striving forward in life. The two branches on the birch tree mirror the open beak of the bird, speaking to my ongoing hunger for nature.