The river in my district is still covered with ice, but we have sunny and warm days, so a good combination for some sketching (I had failed attempts during the freezing period, but painting was impossible).
Early morning Mallard drake, his head had a purple shine in that light:

Closer to midday, with the nice green gloss:

Adult Common Gull:

I decided to end the year with a day in the field. Had an amazing time at a wetland close to my home. The best moment was when 4 White-tailed and one Imperial Eagels were fighting over a Teal caught by one of the former:


Had several Red-breasted Geese amoung thousands of other Geese. I would like to wish you all Happy New Year (and a late Merry Christmas) with this sketch:

5th Nov was a perfect day. Our guides checked the nearby valleys before breakfast, and found fresh SL pugmarks leaving the lower one (Tarboung-valley), and found it entering the upper one (Husing). The Leopard must have passed the campsite during the night). So we headed into Husing. Fresh pugmarks, scraping, fresh but frozen faeces, fresh rockspray. We followed, but after a few hundred meters we... lost the trail. The Leopard left the bottom of the valley. We had no idea in which direction. We climbed up to our usual watchpoint (where we had our first sighting on 1st from). We were very lucky to find very fresh urine right on our watchpoint. We climbed to a higher point, and started scanning from there. I think no more than after 10-15 mins, our guide Dorjey called us to the scope.... The left upper photo of this montage shows what I saw in it.....

I had no time to sketch the Leopard, only when we lost it. These are from memories, quite not the same as if working directly from what I see:

Male Bharals are staying at higher altitudes at this time of the year, so it was a nice opportunity to get close views of this nice one, that joined females an juvs in the Tarboung-valley:

Our guide, Dorjay Stanzin used my telescope to look for Snow Leopard, so I had time for some landscape and rock sketching.

View from the Tarboung-valley:

I'm back from my 2nd Snow Leopard study trip in Ladakh. We had an increadible time, will post my photos and sketches in the nest days.
Fresh Snow Leopard tracks and signs (footprints, scraping, rockspray and hairs):

The view from my hotel room in the last morning in Leh:

Some new watercolours from the last weeks.
Singing Bluethroat:

Male Whinchat:

Common Buzzard:

Bee-eater:

Red-backed Shrike: