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This summer I've been chipping away at a new poster, featuring 50 species commonly found in northeastern bogs—from carnivorous plants to sphagnum mosses and dragonflies. Here's a peek at the sketches…

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SPARROWS! (Illustrations from I Love Birds)

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American red squirrel, for my current project between projects.

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JULY The forest is in full bloom "July bursts with color, and not just in the expected places. Flip a log and you might find a blue-spotted salamander, mottled like fine porcelain. On the forest floor, the violet coral fungus is shocking not only because of its color but because it looks like coral. Birds are thick into the business of raising their young. Other creatures are trying hard to blend in, to not turn into food for hungry baby birds. Can you find the Virginia creeper sphinx moth, banded in gray green, against the leaves of Virginia creeper? The black willow leans out over the edges of streams and ponds, springs up in swamps. Its wood is soft but bendable, a favorite of beavers and basket weavers. At the tips of its brittle branches, catkins send seeds into summer winds. The twigs are made to snap and float downstream, where they may drop roots in a muddy bank and become trees." -Kateri Kosek from The Forest Revealed This painting/page from "The Forest Revealed" celebrates some of my favorite things the month of July has to offer. Here's some close-ups, and the sketches that got me to the final art. The book will be out in September, but is available to preorder now.

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Tufted Puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) for Seabird Institute.

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Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii) for National Audubon Society's Seabird Institute.

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Fratercula arctica (Fratercula arctica) Illustrations for National Audubon's Seabird Institute

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Leach's Storm Petrel illustrations for National Audubon Society's Seabird Institute.

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Friday was International Guillemot Appreciation Day! Can't believe I missed it again, but really, shouldn't everyday be guillemot appreciation day? Here's some BLGU art I created for National Audubon's Seabird Institute.

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In the eastern part of their range, Columbia silk moth caterpillars hatch from tiny eggs, laid on hackmatack (aka tamarack, aka eastern larch) trees. This deciduous conifer, common in the northeast, is the primary food source for these caterpillars. After their cocooned over-winter transformation to a moth, they no longer eat or drink. They’ve only got a couple of weeks on the wing to find a mate, and lay eggs on another larch. Late may to early July is the best time of the year to spot one of these large moths, as well as their cousins, cecropia and luna moth. So double check the side of your house if you forget to turn off the outside light this week.

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The Forest Revealed book cover from start to finish.

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It’s firefly season again! 🔥🪰 / ⚡️🐞

Spring Tree-Top Flasher

“Consider the charisma of a firefly: a beetle that makes no one cringe, that we chase after with jars, a thing that glows. Consider that a firefly is a firefly for only two weeks. That before it is a firefly, it crawls through the dark for a year, wingless. It eats and eats. It tunnels through leaf litter, lethal and glowing. With its mandible it pierces slugs, earthworms, and snails, paralyzing them with venom. It glows so as not to be eaten. It molts out of its exoskeleton and grows bigger.

We assume fireflies will always be here for us, a ritual that carries children through summer dusks. But are our lawns too short, our nights too bright with artificial light? By the time we see them, fireflies have spent a winter underground and have emerged, frenzied to mate, into a confusing world that is not dark enough. They do not eat. Singleminded, they lack even mouthparts. They try to make the brightest flash.” - Kateri Kosek

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Detail from The Forest Revealed’s “June” pages. The photo is something I witnessed while on a walk a few years ago. When I got home I did some Googling to see what was going on. It was so interesting, I had to include the scene in a painting.

Anteater Scarab & Silky Field Ant “Things are not always as they first appear. The ant thinks it is lucky, dragging the dead scarab home to its mound for the colony to feast on. Then the centimeter-long beetle, one of at least 30 species of anteater scarabs across the continent, comes back to life. By playing dead, it has breached the walls of the ant colony. It is not eaten, but instead it eats its fill of ant larvae and lays its own eggs. It spends the winter among these gentle ants. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is steeped in the ants’ scent and so is allowed to remain.” -Text by @katerikosek

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Here's the June painting from, The Forest Revealed. So much happening this month. Cecropia moths are active, pitchers plants are blooming, hummingbirds are nesting, fawns are taking it all in, and the leaves are their most vibrant shades of green. Gotta love June. See what else is happening out there in the woods, in The Forest Revealed. Out in September. Available for preorder

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Acadia Birding Festival is underway! Big thank you for commissioning the 2025 t-shirt design. If you're on MDI this weekend be sure to snag one.

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Got an advance copy of The Forest Revealed! Here it is in its natural habitat. Out in September. PREORDER HERE.

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Some pictures of me working on the book cover for "The Forest Revealed" this past winter. THE BOOK