Fischer’s Lovebirds, Portugal 2025

16 x 18 in

acrylic on masonite

On a birding trip through Portugal, I had the opportunity to see a pair of the very first breeding population of Fischer’s Lovebirds in that country, establishing a colony in a small village in the Algarve. Presumably these birds had escaped captivity and had found other members of the same species. Typical of parrots, they are extremely social and tend to nest colonially. In this case, they had found a Palm tree, also a transplanted species, that reminded them of their African homeland and began nesting in it’s dead fronds.

These new avian explorers were behaving like their human counterparts by hanging on to familiar features from their original home, and gradually fanning out as the new population grows.

The composition of their nesting site inspired me, the dead, sun-bleached Palm leaves like Gothic swords, the interplay of blasting light and deep shadow, a history of exploration and colonization played out in a Palm tree with a pair of Lovebirds, adding tiny House Sparrow-sized colour bombs to the scene of a new beginning in a new land.