I recently stepped into another world by going to the BOU conference, ‘Birds and people’, in Nottingham.
I am a watercolour painter, not an ornithologist. I was showing the first four paintings of a project that I am doing with Douglas GD Russell, Senior Curator at the Natural History Museum. The title of the project is ‘Birds and People: nests as records of our interconnected behaviour’ and the title of the conference coincided nicely. It seemed an ideal opportunity to share what we are doing and give the first few paintings an outing.
Southern Fiscal’s nest, South Africa 1911, 34 x 50cm watercolour by Lillias August RI ©.
The project will result in a series of watercolour paintings showing anthropogenic materials in historic nests collected over the course of 125 years – they span a century of climate change, biodiversity and conflict. The series will be bookended by the second Boer war in South Africa in 1902 and the Ukraine war in 2025 both of which were on show and you can see here. I am still painting nests for the project. Each one throws light on their time in history. More importantly for me, they also have an intricate beauty in themselves that is deeply evocative and moving. Both Douglas and I included statements on the conference poster that elaborate on the project and can be read here.
I was heartened when the Sunday Times, having heard about the project, recently ran a very moving article inspired by the nest from Ukraine which was made using fibre-optic cable from drones. You can read it here.
Fibre-optic nest, Ukraine 2025, 36 x 41cm watercolour by Lillias August RI ©.
I was told that this was the first time the BOU had had an artist at the conference. I hope that it is something they will do again. I have known many collaborations between scientists and artists and they always throw light, delight and inspiration to both parties. I know that I gained a great deal – an artist’s working life can benefit from being solitary, but sharing can bring rewards, useful information and new friends. The help and kindness I received was overwhelming and on top of that, the lectures were fascinating even if sometimes the graphs were a bit too hard and fast for me to decipher!
Please get in contact if you find an inspiring nest that includes manmade materials or you want to know more. We aim to have a final exhibition of the series in Spring 2027 and you can join my mailing list via the website if you want to be kept up to date, or simply follow me on social media.
Image credit
Top right and featured image: Lillias August RI – BOU Conference display 2026 ©
