April Draw-a-Bird Day: More of the alphabet of birds

This month’s theme is birds that begin with L,M, or N. Another alphabet DAB-Day was October 2023, with the ABC’s of birds.

DAB-Day is open to all. Send a photo of your bird to wednesday.studio.artists@gmail.com, and we’ll include it in the next DAB-Day post. DAB-Day is not about artistic skills, but about having fun and sharing drawings of birds.

April 8 was designated as annual Draw-a-Bird Day and we turned it into a MONTHLY thing. Here’s the story behind DAB-Day’s origins:

In 1943, Dorie Cooper, a seven-year-old living in England, went with her mother to a hospital to visit her uncle who was wounded in the war. Dorie’s uncle was very distraught, having lost his right leg to a land mine. In an attempt to cheer him up, Dorie asked him to draw a bird for her. He looked out his window and drew a picture of a robin.

After seeing her uncle’s bird picture, Dorie laughed out loud and proclaimed that he was not a very good artist, but that she would hang the picture in her room nonetheless. Other wounded soldiers had their day brightened by the event, and they produced pictures every time Dorie came to visit. Within several months, the entire ward’s walls were decorated by bird drawings.

Three years later, Dorie was killed after being struck by a car. At her funeral, her coffin was filled with bird images that had been made by soldiers, nurses, and doctors from the hospital. After that, those men and women remembered Dorie by drawing birds on her birthday, April 8.

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