Sankt Gallen, 1562

The wonderfull collection of digitalized codices from Sankt Gallen Abbey library, in Switzerland, one of the oldest and richest medieval libraries in the world, offers us a very special work of great interest to know about Northern Bald Ibis historical distribution.

The manuscript includes Four-part vocal pieces for holy days of the church year, and it's numbered 542 in the catalog.

Prince-bishop Diethelm Blarer ordered Italian composer Manfredo Barbarini Lupo, from Correggio, composed these challenging vocal pieces, Father Heinrich Keller (1518-1567) wrote the text, and the manuscript illustrator Kaspar Härtli from Lindau on the northern side of the Bodensee illuminated the first pages with the important holy days of the church year.

Some of the sheets show an important number of birds, not to scale.

Page 5 shows, among goldfinches, crossbills, wagtails, robins, wrens, bullfinches, and some other birds difficult to identify, probably the finest, most accurate image in the group, a young northern bald ibis, proving a familiarity of the artist with the bird.

Source: Cod. Sang. 542, page 5, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen / Codices Electronici Sangallenses http://www.cesg.unifr.ch

Brendan Wenzel's vision

Brendan Wenzel is a New York-based illustrator, and, as he says with a great interest in all things furred, feathered and scaled.

This illustration belongs to the series on the edge, devoted to some of the most endangered species of animals. 

Inspiring NBI

Here we can see some drawings by Joaquín López-Rojas with a mixed technique: pen drawing and digital colour.

This Sevilla based artist has participated in many publications about nature in Spain, Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea. 

WALDRAPPATHON

Another creative project around Northern Bald Ibis is the Waldrappathon, an artwork by Steve Walker based on ink drawings and watercolours as well as poems (haikus and sonnets).

Joe Beale and NBI

This is a Joe Beale finepen drawing of a Northern Bald Ibis. He draw it for Summersdale book Was Beethoven a Birdwatcher? A Bird's eye History of the World, by David Turner, appeared in 2011.

Joe works with fineline pen and watercolour pencil in books, magazines, TV, ... His interests include mainly birds and other wildlife, but also gothic and ghostly issues, as shown by the name of his ghost blog. 

Ralph Steadman's view on NBI

Northern bald ibis is a highly iconic bird, and his image has been largely reproduced by many artists.

This impressive image is an artwork by Ralph Steadman (renowned for his political and social caricatures, cartoons and picture books) for the project Ghosts of gone birds. This is a huge creative project involving more than 120 artists to encourage preservation of bird species through raising awareness and funds for  BirdLife International's Preventing Extinctions programme.

A documentary about surf

During last Cinema International Festival of Gijón Juan Díaz-Faes was awarded for his documentary Eremita Stew ¿un documental de surf?.
Northern Bald Ibis was inspiring for the documentary as well as for some illustrations, as we show here.

Juan does not only make films but he's also an illustrator contribution to a series of publications.

The coast where NBI live are also very frequented by surfers and places like Imsouanne, Aourir, Tamraght or Taghazout are well known for this sport.

Some cartoons

Environmental education is crucial to approach local populations and raise awareness for conservation.

In 2001 one Peace Corps' volunteer, Carolyn LaFontaine, and a British illustrator, Alasdair Bright, created a small trilingual book on a young ibis taht wanted to play with children. It used a soccer as a link to attrack the interest of children towards this species that shares the habitat with them.


Orrie spying children while they play soccer (Alasdair Bright)

  

 


 Souss-Massa cliffs, after Alasdair Bright watercolors



This book inspired another cartoon, this time in Syria. Alasdair added some drawings and the story was adapted to the local context.



Beaky's cover. Click to download pdf from original site.