Tag: turkey

November 2025 in Davis California

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Mishkas and Dresbach HB 110125 sm

And so we move on towards the end of 2025 in Davis California. That was a long year wasn’t it. Don’t go back and tell them, 2026 is not any better. All you can do is what you can. I do my job, spend time with my family, and draw lots and lots of things. Sometimes I run. Last November I ran my second 10k and nailed it, getting my personal best time, ten minutes faster than the year before (my watch broke 17 seconds into the run so I had no idea of my pace, so I just ran faster and it worked). Then I went to work, and made a big teaching budget presentation to our faculty. In my post-run confidence I decided that day to run a half marathon by the next November. That would be this coming November, 2026. I have done a 10k since, and a 7k, and a 5k, and lots of running and then not running. And right now, three months away from the half marathon I told myself I would do when I’m 50, it’s more of a ‘having-a-laugh’ marathon. No way do I feel ready yet. Sure I can work at it still, and it’s a great goal. But mentally, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m more on the ‘having-a-laugh’ side right now than in the ‘do it!’ camp. I will decide in a month. Still if there are any marathons for sketching, well I’m right there, because that I can do. The sketch above was on the first day of November, a bright day where I stood next to the Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer Mansion (I can never remember the order of the names) and drew the side of Mishka’s and the Varsity. I liked this sketch a lot, though I only coloured in a little bit, including that shadow, which I was very pleased about because I used a little burnt sienna in the mix with ultramarine, which I had seen someone do at the symposium and I’d never done, and it created quite a warm feeling to the shade. Look at me, mixing paints to find nice tones. While carry lots of paints around I have never been one of those people who gets super into paints and mixes, I am all about doing the drawing and colouring it in. After coming back from Toulouse now I am thinking about doing more paint stuff, maybe even getting better brushes, but that would mean looking after them, not putting them in my pencil case where the bristles get caught in the zip, that sort of thing. I always think, I’m not a good enough painter to deserve a good brush. Story of my life.

Arboretum 110725 sm

This one was drawn in the Arboretum, and that is a turkey in the foreground, that was just passing by with its turkey friends. We have so many in Davis, they just wander about. “Don’t people eat them? They would eat them here!” say people back in London, to which I say “No they don’t, obviously” and “No they wouldn’t, obviously”. This one was just minding its own business, digging up worms or whatever, and I drew the tress and Lake Spafford behind. I like the Arboretum, sometimes I get bored of sketching all the trees and then I remember, no I love sketching trees. Not so much all the foliage, but that’s like saying you like sketching people, just not the faces, or the feet or hands or clothes. Wait, I do say all that. I like drawing hair, and beards, and glasses are a big help so I don’t have to worry about messing up the eyes.

Bizarro World E St 110825 sm

This is Bizarro World on E street, which I have drawn a few times before, because it is right there and I come down this way a lot. It’s a good comic store. They rent movies too but I have not done that. They have games too, and action figures, and cards, all that fun stuff. Second hand sci-fi and fantasy books too. When I was reading comics a lot I would go in there more, I’ve not been reading many comics for a while now though. I like drawing sketches like this, not always completing the colour, but really focusing on the perspective, especially as it goes down the alleyway.

soccer and lifestyle (new location) 111225

Speaking of shops in Davis, here is one of my favourites, Soccer and Lifestyle. To my massive surprise, I was passing down 2nd Street one day and it was GONE. Now this was one of the first shops I ever went into in Davis, on that day in Fall 2005 when my wife was interviewing at UC Davis and I was walking about the downtown, seeing if this was somewhere I’d want to live or not. A lot hinged on that, if I had said “nah, Davis is too far away, too flat, and the downtown shops are rubbish” we would probably not have come here, well maybe. As it was, I went to the Avid Reader bookshop, Bogey’s Books (which is where Bizarro World now is), and Soccer and Lifestyle, which clinched the deal for me. The fact Davis had a shop dedicated to selling football shorts, my obsession? I chatted with the owner, who complained about Kappa not supplying in the US (Spurs were Kappa at the time, before Puma, Under Armour and now Nike), and I decided I really liked this shop and Davis was alright, as it goes. Well we ended up moving here and the rest is biography. So when I saw the shop was empty I panicked. (Would we have to move to a city closer to where football shirts were sold?) But I read the sign that said they had moved to 3rd Street, just a block away, phew. I do really like their new location. In fact I sketched it inside during the World Cup in June. The last kit I got there was the 2026 Japan away kit, that one is lovely. Anyway I drew this one shortly after the new location opened, it’s right next to Dunloe Brewing, which is where the old bike shop used to be, B&L? I forget the name now. I probably drew that. Just past that is Zia’s I have drawn that place a couple of times. I have this idea of making a book of all the shops in downtown Davis, mixed in with sketches of the people that run them or at least work there, that would be a really fun project and way to connect downtown. Everything changes.

2nd & G panorama 111525

And finally this is another panorama, down on the corner of 2nd and G Streets. I have drawn panoramas here before, but this one was done during one of our Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls, we had a good crowd with us that day. I used that tree with its reddish bark as the anchor in the middle for this sketch, and let the world unfold around it. You can see some sketchers there on the left. The trees were already quite autumnal, it happens a little later here than in some other places. On the left corner is Froggy’s / Tommy J’s, I have not been in there for ages but I remember they have delicious chicken burgers in there, I mean really nice. There is a sign to the right of the centre there that tells a little bit of history. This part of Davis is the oldest part of town, and used to have a kind of gateway arch here many decades ago.

November 2025 was actually 20 years since I moved to Davis (November 5th actually). I already commemorated that at the time with the following two posts:

Check back soon for December…

sketching the birds and getting stung by a wasp

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LDD 071820 Arboretum
On Saturday morning we held our first “Let’s Draw Davis” sketchcrawl since the pandemic sent us all home, our most recent one being on February 29th. It was a socially distanced crawl, masked up and stood out of the way, down at the UC Davis Arboretum. It’s been a while. I felt uncomfortable being out sketching, but when I arrived our group was not too big so it was nice to see people. However seconds after parking up my bike I got stung by a wasp! Right behind my ear. That has never happened to me before, not even on those hot June days in the garden back in England, but they finally got me now. So I was in a bit of pain as I introduced the sketchcrawl from behind the veil of my face mask. I was wearing a mask with one of my sketches on it, from Porto. Above is the view from the path of the Redwood Grove.
Davis Underpass 071820
Above is the richly decorated underpass that goes beneath the train tracks. When I lived in South Davis I would take this route every day on my bike, but it has been years. it was not so colourfully painted back then, but it looks very nice now. It was hot while I sketched, and my head was hurting a bit, probably due to the wasp sting that was still throbbing a bit.
LDD 071820 Grapes
Above, a few grapes hanging down from the Gateway gardens. Below, there were some turkeys passing through with a bunch of young poults, so I quickly sketched some. The bird on the right is a Green Heron, though I thought it was a Kingfisher due to the colouring, which reminded me of Kingfishers back in England, which to be fair I’ve also never seen. I was told it was a Green Heron so I am glad I waited to write that down. It was incredible – it would extend its neck to double its body length like Mister Fantastic or something. I expected another bird that looked like Doctor Doom to come along and fight it and call it “that fool Richards”, or a movie studio to come along and reboot it unsuccessfully. Still it was a fascinating creature.
LDD 071820 turkeys and green heron
Speaking of fascinating creatures, here is that wasp. I didn’t know exactly what had stung me because I didn’t see it, but when I went back to get my bike, one of the other sketchers Bill Lum came with me to identify it, to see if it were a wasp, a yellowjacket, a bee or maybe even a murder hornet, at least that is what I was thinking. He noticed that there were plenty of them over some of the bike racks, and they had built nests inside – putting my bike on one had disturbed it, so it had stung me. As he got close, one of the little bleeders came out and stung him too! So, we had to be careful. I held my sketchbook up as a swatter, and carefully extracted my bike from the wasp danger zone. Gently does it. I managed to do so without getting stung again. The sting was not particularly bad, and went down by the afternoon. I’d never been stung before so it was a first experience, nature’s way of telling me it’s not time to go sketching outside yet.
Paper Wasp
Bill took a photo of it, and identified it to be a ‘paper wasp’. So naturally I have spent the past few days trying to come up with paper wasp jokes, none of them any good, at least not on paper. So not a yellowjacket, not a murder hornet. Very interesting to draw though!

big bird on campus

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turkey
Look at this big geezer. I had to go into the office in early April, a few weeks into the shelter-in-place, and found an overgrown campus where the wildlife had taken over. Standing like a sentinel outside my building was this turkey, looking enormous with his feathers all ruffled up and on display. Strutting. His long wobbly beak and that colourful chin feature looked like something from an early 1980s Dr Who prop department. The ‘snood’. Always reminds me of those Arsenal players who wore those snoods when it got cold but the Premier League said they couldn’t. And the long hairy bit on his chest that falls down, look how long it is! That’s called a ‘beard’. Some humans have those. As far as I’m aware legs covered in tattoos, shaving one side of your hair and sampling snifters of craft beer aren’t yet popular in the turkey population. And he didn’t want me entering the building. He kept shaking his feathers at me as if to say, #stayhomesavelives ! #gobble #itscalledasnoodnotafacialnutsack (and other popular hashtags). When I went in, he came and stood by the door looking through the window at me and stayed there for a few hours, goading me when I came down to use the vending machine, I better not try to leave or he will stop me and ask for my attestation, am I going out for essential items (cranberry sauce or gravy I suppose). There are a few other doors to the building though so unless his mates are covering all the exits he wasn’t stopping me. He did loads of poos all over the entranceway though. You needed to know that. We get a lot of turkeys in Davis, there is a flock that lives near me on the north Davis green belt. They strut about making loud gobble noises when I go for an evening walk. They live quite high up in very tall trees, you’d be surprised how high they fly up. You may recall the story of Downtown Tom, a solo turkey who lived in downtown Davis for a while, occasionally terrorizing citizens and catching bad guys, evading all attempts at capture, until The Man had had Enough, and called in a sniper to assassinate him in his sleep. I imagine they though if they ever did catch him, they would all stand around wondering whether Tom actually intended to be caught, because he had some other nefarious plan up his snood. But no, they took him out in the dead of night, not releasing the news for six months, presumably it took that long to be sure he was really dead and didn’t have some kind of horcrux somewhere. Dudes, he’s a turkey. Tell you what though you don’t want to get into a ruck with one, they have much bigger claws than you do.

I drew this from a photo I took, in the grey paper sketchbook.

the downfall of downtown tom

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4th and F St, Davis

Just a brief interruption before I start posting my Italy stories, back to Davis again, here is a sketch from last week drawn downtown on the corner of 4th and F. Oh it’s been hot in Davis. There was a heatwave while we were gone, and another after we were back, oh and there’s more heat coming. Davis in summertime! Well one thing we learned this week was the death of one of the true characters of downtown Davis in recent history. I say ‘death’, I should say ‘assassination’, really. I’m talking of course about Downtown Tom. Downtown Tom was a turkey. I don’t mean he was like a turkey, I mean he was an actual turkey called Downtown Tom. There should be a ballad about him. Actually I’d be massively surprised if there isn’t already a ballad about him. “The Downfall of Downtown Tom”.  There has been a Turkey Problem in Davis for a number of years now, (I can just imagine Downtown Tom now, narrowing his eyes, growling, “What Turkey Problem?”) with fairly large flocks of the wild birds wandering the town, digging up mud. jumping on roofs, annoying postmen, I don’t know, whatever turkeys do. We get loads of them in my neighbourhood in north Davis, I would see them outside my house all the time, loads of them. Huge things they are too. I tell people back in London and they don’t believe me, they say things like “why don’t you just catch them and cook it for dinner?” like that is just the easiest thing in the world, just catch and kill a massive turkey with my bare hands, somehow waster half the day trying to skin it and then spend the next week trying to cook it, for what exactly? I’d rather just go to Burger King. Of course people in London go out hunting wild animals for food with their bare hands every day I expect, it’s so easy, no it isn’t, just go to Lidl. Anyway, we have a lot of turkeys. As was reported in the Davis Enterprise recently, the city recently formed a “Wild Turkey Population Management Plan” to move the turkeys to a different part of California where they can’t block Davis traffic or dig up verges or whatever they were doing and a whole bunch were sent off to the country, but Tom…

Downtown Tom was a loner. He didn’t hang with the other turkeys. I don’t know if they banquished him, maybe he lost a trial-by-stone to become the new turkey emperor, or maybe he was just too cool to hang out with those squares in the suburbs, whatever his deal was, Downtown Tom became a local legend. None of us will ever have a name as cool as Downtown Tom. I used to see him wandering about by himself, and I saw in him a kindred spirit, he didn’t mind his own company. The only thing was, he was occasionally a bit aggressive, a bit lary, got on the wrong side of the law one too many times. Misunderstood, was Downtown Tom. Nobody knew nor cared what he had seen, what he had lived through, all those countless Thanksgivings, no, he was just ‘a wild turkey’ and a ‘nuisance’. There was the case where someone called the cops on him because he was ‘surrounding their car’ and they couldn’t get out. Sure, he was a menace, but those streets are mean when you’re a turkey, doing it on your own. But like the Artful Dodger, they couldn’t catch him, they couldn’t bring him in front of the beak, as it were. He outsmarted them every time. When the Animal Control people would come after him they would manage to chase him out of downtown, but turkeys are hard to catch and he would always come back. Oh he was a sly one, old Downtown Tom, a comic book villain. In January, however, the threat of Downtown Tom was finally lifted, his reign of terror come to an ignominious end with a Moe Green Special (probably). It was less the Wild West, more Leon The Professional. A ‘contractor’ was hired by the city to take him out, and execute him they did, at night, in his sleep where he roosted, with a rifle. Not, as my city-dwelling London friends would believe, in broad daylight with bare hands and a boiling pot on the stove. Maybe it went down differently? Maybe it was like Jules Winfield, reading a passage from the Bible before laying down vengeance upon him. (“Say Gobble again! Say Gobble one more goddamn time!”) No, in the end Downtown Tom went quietly, his passing kept a secret from us for six months until now. (“Codswallop I say. Nope, I reckon he’s still out there, too tired to carry on.”) I guess they had to do what they had to do. This town wasn’t big enough for etc and so on. He’s gone to his gravy. Anyway, this was his manor, around 4th and F Streets. Tom may be gone but they say his ghost still lives on (they don’t say that, by the way), and if you listen carefully at night, you may hear a gobbling (no, that’s just people eating late night burgers at Jack-in-the-Box), and you better watch out, or Downtown Tom will get you (he won’t, he is really dead).