Black and ink and flamingos?!?! Oh well. A subtly stunning black. Flamingoes are pink/red because of carotenoid algae that they eat (or that the shrimp and other invertebrates they eat have eaten). And they have bills that are nearly as large as the rest of their head.

I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten an avocado whose flesh is this dark, but… maybe? It’s a nice, rich ink. More gamebirds today – including Ben Franklin’s choice for our national emblem: Wild Turkey! Wild Turkey is an incredibly intelligent bird, and Franklin didn’t think the carrion eating that the Bald Eagle occasionally resorts to…

An ink from a pen company. Solid color. Solid ink. Nothing showy. Smooth-writing and well-behaved, which is exactly what one expects from pen company ink. (It was an Aurora pen responsible for this entire rabbit whole.) An enormous avian family today, so we’re going to take two days to learn about these diverse gamebirds.

The first “permanent” ink. We could talk endlessly about what makes an ink “permanent”. Modern fountain pen ink is made mostly of water, and when writing something, I often think “how long will these words remain on this page?” The original Declaration of Independence is fading; ancient manuscripts are often in better condition. Paper, ink…

An ink which honors the second (but probably the most famous) regiment of the US Colored Troops (USCT) of the Civil War, Noodler’s 54th Massachusetts is almost exactly the color of a Union uniform, which is a nice reminder that there should be no distinction among those who wear the same uniform (even though sadly,…

I have been looking forward to writing with an ink from the Sailor Manyo line, and either my pen was acting up, or the ink did not behave well all throughout my writing day, but Koke gave me a little bit of a struggle, fading significantly for no apparent reason. Still, a soft, pleasing color.…

I admit it, today’s ink has had me laughing hysterically all day. It’s a beautiful ink, and if someone didn’t know the name of the ink, they’d think only “this is a beautiful ink”. But the name creates this super-odd juxtaposition in one’s mind: see the beautiful ink and at the same time think “yep,…

Pelikan makes pens, and this is quite a standard, though very nice ink from them. Too bad we weren’t studying about pelicans today – maybe one of Pelikan’s inks will have been drawn when we get to them! More today about this huge family that we call “waterfowl” collectively, including Barrow’s Goldeneye, which I saw…

Back to Noodler’s for a color that didn’t knock my socks off but is certainly a very nice green (maybe I’m just not that into green, or maybe I know how frustrating green is in watercolors and I’m projecting that frustration onto ink colors). This family of birds is quite large at 173 species, and…

This is a color of ink that I had been occasionally using before I “got into ink”. It’s a lovely lighter blue, almost a cornflower shade. Today’s avian family has only one species in it: the primitive Magpie Goose, most likely the most ancient of all surviving Ducks, Geese, and Swans.