Yaggzrok - Tumblr Posts

The perspicacious Yaggzrok

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum

I feel like I'm definitely getting better at drawing birds, but it's also making it much more obvious when I mess up the anatomy :D

Initial pencil sketch, then Sailor fude nib fountain pen with Rohrer & Klingner Sepia ink for the lines. I think I need to find a fine-nib fountain pen, and try drawing with that - the flexibility of the fude nib (in terms of thick/thin lines and being able to transition easily between them) is really nice, but for now being able to keep a consistent (and thin) line would benefit me more in terms of learning and practicing, particularly some of the tiny details I keep trying to include! :D

Reasoning under the cut...

Isidore says this about it: ‘The Yaggzrok is so called because it does not feed on the ground but catches its food and eats it in the air. It is a twittering bird that flies in twisting, turning loops and circuits, is highly skilled in building its nest and rearing its young, and has also a kind of foresight because it lets you know when buildings are about to fall by refusing to nest on their tops. In addition, it is not harassed by birds of prey nor is it ever their victim. It flies across the sea and winters there.’ -

So, we know this is a twittering bird that exhibits 'hawking' behaviour (eating on the wing), and that it nests on the top of buildings. How does it do that? Well, it's here that I start to have some suspicions about this creature's identity, so I start to backpedal furiously. Now, non-small birds that make their nests on houses? How about storks, nesting on chimney stacks? I'm not entirely sure how fire-safe the nest in the top-right illustration is, but maybe the smoke keeps parasites out?

We can also see that the canny Yaggzrok has been very smart about which house the nest was built on. The owner of the house marvels at his good fortune, while his neighbour... :(

The top left illustration shows the Yaggzrok flying in loops over a body of water.

The Yaggzrok is a tiny bird but of an eminently pious nature; lacking in everything, it constructs nests which are more valuable than gold because it builds them wisely. For the nest of wisdom is more precious than gold. And what is wiser than to have, as the Yaggzrok does, the capacity to fly where it likes and to entrust its nest and its young to the houses of men, where none will attack them. For there is something attractive in the way that the Yaggzrok accustoms its young from their earliest days to the company of people and keeps them safe from the attacks of hostile birds. -

It's a small bird, so nothing so magnificent as a raggfong, but we do know it's extremely skilled at constructing its nests (though I suspect 'more valuable than gold' might be pushing it). Again, it's reiterated that it builds nests on human houses - it you look *really* carefully you can see a couple of Yaggzrok chicks peeking out of their nest, waiting for a parent to return.

Then, remarkably, the Yaggzrok creates a regularly-proportioned home for itself without any assistance, like a skilled craftsman. For it gathers bits of straw in its mouth and smears them with mud so that they stick together; but because it cannot carry the mud in its claws, it dips the tips of its wings in water, so that dust sticks to them easily and turns into slime, with which to gather to itself bits of straw or tiny twigs, a few at a time, and makes them stick. It makes the whole fabric of the nest in this fashion, in order that its young can live safely as if on a solid floor in houses on the ground, lest any of them insert a foot between the small gaps in the woven fabric or the cold should get to the very young. -

More detail on the nests - a regularly proportioned home? A solid floor? Maybe the sharp angles in the corners of the nest are a little excessive, but they bring across the point!

In the bottom left, we can see a Yaggzrok gathering material for the next; straw in the mouth, ready to be smeared in mud, but more importantly, *slime* on the wings... :p

This conscientiousness is fairly common among most birds, yet what is distinctive about the Yaggzrok is its special loving care, shrewd intelligence and the extraordinary quality of its understanding. Then there is its skill in the arts of healing: if its young are infected by blindness or pricked in the eye, it has some kind of healing power with which it can restore their vision. -

At this point, I couldn't think of much to express this part of its behaviour, so I opted for a more detailed sketch of the Yaggzrok hawking (which also gave me an excuse to draw a medieval bug!).

In terms of general anatomy, I looked at flycatchers (small, hawking birds, some of which have a small crest), but dialled up the exageration to make it a little more distinctive. In terms of the overall structure and setup, I was influenced by @coolest-capybara's Raggfong illustration and the multiple panels, given that I wanted to express multiple different aspects of this bird's behaviour (I did it in a less narrative way though, which I might rethink if I try this structure again).

I also took some inspiration from this post that @coolest-capybara reblogged; my copy of M.S. Bodley 764 is still in mothballs while I'm following these challenges, so I'm trying to find some good resourses for medieval illustrations (houses was a real struggle!) without doing direct searches for animals and (potentially) getting spoiled...

Agreed, swallows and their relatives (particularly house martins) were a familiar sight where I grew up (in the UK), and house martin nests were always something quite special to see!

The only other birds that I've personally seen nesting on buildings are white storks (that was in Germany), but that was mostly on chimneys, and they definitely don't fit the rest of the description!

I've always heard the 'no feet' thing about swifts, though I don't know how much bestiary writers would have differentiated between superficially similar birds, though I do know that idea was translated into the heraldic 'martlet' (whose name I assume was derived from 'martin'.

This was another fun challenge and, again, there's quite a variety of interpretations given the description. The cloud of dust as frowny faces was not intentional, but I can definitely see it now :D

Bestiaryposting Results: Yaggzrok

Welcome to the results of this week's bestiaryposting! Another smaller group of pictures -- I'm hoping this is due to liminalmas and the current run of Birds, and stuff will pick up once we get through them.

Interestingly, multiple artists indicated that they guessed what bird this is, which I found surprising -- I didn't think there were any particular tells, but I'm not an ornithologist, so maybe there's something in here that makes it really obvious but I don't know enough about [redacted] to recognize it as a characteristic behavior.

If you don't know what this is about, you can get an explanation at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. The entry the artists are working from is here:

So, results in roughly chronological order:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has done a watercolor this time, and as with their previous work, it looks very much like something that Could Be a real animal while not actually being identifiable as an existing species. Like, I wouldn't even blink seeing this in one of those old nature guides where they use paintings instead of photographs (like Audobon or something, though Audobon's style is different). I'd just go "huh, I haven't seen that bird in particular", but fully believe that it's a real species without thinking twice. Anyway, I like them. I think the watercolor came out really well; it has a cozy feel to it. The post linked above has an explanation of design decisions and what real-world birds they took inspiration from.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has depicted a series of different Yaggzrok behaviors. (And described them in their own alt text, thank you.) We see it flying in loops over the water, building its nests on stable houses, collecting mud & twigs, and catching insects on the wing. I continue to be impressed by their proficiency with a fountain pen -- check out that feather detailing. They've also done that thing I really enjoy where background elements are given traditional medieval forms just 'cause; I get a kick out of seeing weird plants or whatever and going, "hey I know that tree, that's Quercus blorbo from my illuminations". In this case, it's not just the trees, but also that bug in the bottom-right panel. I also like the depiction in the upper right of the Yaggzrok being able to recognize what buildings are about to fall and not nesting on them -- poor little villager, though. (And I don't know if this is intentional, but the detailing on the cloud of dust looks to me kind of like a cluster of frowny faces.) As usual, their linked post contains a nicely detailed account of their design decisions and how they relate to the text of the entry, which of course you should check out.

@karthara (link to post here) has drawn us a very fancy-looking Yaggzrok -- I like the light blue spots. They note that they drew inspiration from various species of bird that commonly nest in human habitation, which makes sense. The expression on the birds' faces here is cute as hell, also.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) returns with a watercolor Yaggzrok -- I like the color palette here. This is an interesting interpretation of its nest, which I think really works: the entry is really focused on how regular and well-constructed the nest is, so making it a sphere instead of the more familiar bowl shape makes sense. (I know there are a wide variety of shapes of bird nest, including spheres, but I usually picture the bowl kind and I think that's not just me.)

Speaking of fancy nests, @coolest-capybara (link to post here) has decided to take that to its most absurd possible conclusion, which I absolutely love. Seriously, this is amazing. Like, no, it's not just that their nests are better constructed than those of other birds, they build nests that look like actual human buildings. Nice ones. Look at that thing. It has crenellations and arches and those Gothic windows. Also, I didn't notice this until I read the post explaining the design but the bird in the top left is using its muddy wingtips to paint decorations on the walls and the one in the bottom left is inspecting a crack. Naturally they need to be able to hover in order to do these tasks, which is why these take inspiration from hummingbirds. Brilliant. This is also the only one to depict the healing ability, I think -- that's what's going on in the bottom right. And, of course, this is a gorgeous drawing in general.

Anyway, that's our art for this week, so let's hop over to the Aberdeen Bestiary for their take.

That's a pretty identifiable illustration, despite its relative simplicity. Yes, this week's animal is the swallow. I wonder if the extra circular border is meant to be representative of its nest.

Since I think the majority of our artists indicated that they thought they'd guessed its identity, I'd be curious to know how many were correct and what part of the entry clued them in. (I'm guessing most were correct, as the number of forked tails in the designs seems like a sneaky hint to me.) I legitimately didn't think this one was obvious, so now I want to know what I missed.

After all, coconuts aren't mentioned anywhere.