Bird vocabulary

Birds are a part of our everyday environment, while at the same time carrying portentous meanings. The mostly commonly seen birds will be known to virtually everyone. For a birder, a bird seen several times over the course of several years will not be "rare," simply uncommon. Birds seen every day or week or month form the basic vocabulary, expanded from there into more species. Being able to rapidly identify a common bird is helpful, because it serves a point of comparison. 

Literally too, our visual vocabulary corresponds to a nomenclature. We have extra adjectives or descriptors to distinguish species, instead of just duck, goose, sparrow.  

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I guess I'm looking for a pretentious way to express a rather dumb and basic idea: we see common birds commonly, and know the words for them. Birding is [simply] an extension of that.   

Schuyler

This drawing of Jimmy Schuyler seems better to me now than when I first did it. There is some effect where a drawing seems better (to the person who did it) much later, with the effect of hindsight and forgetting the actual process.  It is obviously a copy of another drawing (or photo?). If we don't compare it to the model, it might seem even better!  
 

Leaf man

 

Visual ...

 

I guess I was expecting something interesting, like what skills are involved in visual literacy? What would be an example of someone who didn't have it? How does it relate to traditional practices of looking at art? Is it a matter of putting into words what we are already seeing? Of teaching to see? Is the idea that people don't know how to interpret visual data in their own lives? That seems improbable. We are able to buy groceries, for example. We need to read the packaging, with images, words. Is there some societal lack in visual literacy that is having a negative effect?  

Visual

 I think the problem with the "visual' field is... too many words, too language centered. It's very easy to talk with words about other things made out of words. It's not that language cannot talk about music or visual things, etc... but it is not the most efficient medium. So, I can show you an image, or describe it to you in words... 

Really good art criticism does make effective use of language. You can tell someone what they are seeing, or do so in a way that makes them see better. But this is an unusual skill.