Behold the simple chickadee. With its black toupee, matching beard and silver jacket of wings, it is a bundle of quick intent. According to famed Canadian artist Robert Bateman, it also has a face to forget.

“A chickadee’s face is like the end of a sock,” he remarks frankly from his studio on Salt Spring Island, BC. “There’s no expression on it.”

Bateman is watching chickadees pull on a bird feeder outside his window as he chats on the phone and paints, an iPad to his left so he can view different photos of the animals he so vividly depicts.