The last two baby birds flew away late yesterday afternoon. The first one went and the second one followed within about 15 seconds. I guess that the nest was just too lonely!!!
It has been strangely quiet at our front door today!!!!
Here is a family portrait that came from the video a couple of days ago…..
Bye birdies…..live long and prosper!!!!
Well, two of the baby birds have flown the coop….so to speak.
The first one flew off yesterday, while I was standing on the porch. He flew into a nearby tree and we were able to get a few photos of his first perch.
Here is the first place that he landed….you can see him in the crook of the middle branches……
He then proceeded to fly/walk up the branch to a new perch……
The Dad showed up and talked to the baby and followed him from tree to tree. We were concerned because this was NOT the oldest bird and may not have been quite ready to fledge, but we were encouraged by the care that Dad showed for him!!!
THEN, this morning I set up the camera, and lo and behold, one of them left while I was filming.
If you are watching the video, you will notice that the camera sways slightly about 15 seconds into it. This is because Dad lands on the tripod bar and starts chirping to the baby. When you see the flowers on the right move, he flies to the top of the wreath and then you can hear him fly away from the nest.
At this point the Baby bird looks like he is trying to get up his courage!!! He does a bit of scratching ( displacement activity!!), looks over the edge a couple of times, takes a deep breath and off he goes!!!!!
The other two are still in the nest. We are hoping that they fly away this afternoon as we have roofers coming to our house EARLY in the morning. We have put them off for over a week hoping that the birds would be gone, but we cant afford to wait any longer.
First of all….the bird update. My daughter and some of my friends are starting to call me the “bird lady”….oh well, I have been called worse!!!!
Here is a video of one of the feeding times today. Notice how big the birds are now…….
This video shows lots of movement in the nest. I am wondering how they are all fitting…….
Later in the day, we realized that they were moving around a LOT so I went outside to set up the camera again. As I set it up, one of the babies just sat very still and watched me. I knew Michael was just inside the door, so I whispered for him to bring the still camera. The bird eyed me off carefully as I took this photo, but didn’t attempt to hide like they normally do……
Now, onto the fun that I have had this weekend…….
On Saturday, I spent some time looking thru the book “Fabric Art Collage” by Rebekah Meier. As usual, it inspired me to get into the studio and try a few things.
My first step was to use one of the dyed silk hankies that I bought when we were in Australia. If you haven’t seen these before, the large hankie is made of many fine layers of silk mesh.
Here it is with all of the layers in tact……
This is what it looks like when a layer is peeled off. One hint that was in the book was to use lotion on your hands before you pick up the silk layers as they are very sheer and will stick to rough spots on your hands.
Following the instructions in the book, I laid it onto parchment paper, sprayed it with starch (the book called for a fancy stiffener, but I just used what I had), covered it with more parchment and ironed the daylights out of it.
The result was a slightly fused, stiff piece of fabric that could easily be picked up and moved.
I then pulled out some stamps and started stamping the silk with various colors. These stamps were NOT designed for fabric, so I wasn’t sure what would happen.
I also read in the book about using batting as the backing for felting, so I decided to try that this time. I added some wisps of wool and felted the background down, using the Felting Machine that I bought too long ago and never used!!!
I then placed the silk piece over the top and felted away again.
One unexpected thing happened here……the felting needles disturbed the stamps so that the designs disappeared, but it left wonderful little dots of ink through out the piece.
I added a few more stamps on the top and tried to figure out what to do next. My husband suggested that I start by following the blue blob in the middle of the piece and I went from there to adding a couple of flowers and lots of free motion lines.
It was time to move into the living room to spend time with hubby, so I grabbed my box of lace and paint and did some more playing. I started with some tatting that my Grandmother had made. After trying to color it with stamps (and not liking it), I ended up painting it with gold. I used some gold thread to attach the lace to the top and then added french knots to the center of each flower…..
The final step was to take the brush that still had gold paint on it and brush it around in various places…..waste not, want not!!!!
This morning I added a backing fabric and used the piece to cover a journal book.
I loved the idea of trying some new ideas and really like that I was able to put the new ideas to good use and get a finished product from it!!!!
Now….back to bird watching!!!!
The baby birds are really growing now and are starting to try their wings and flap around in the nest. It is amazing that there is room for all four of them!!!!
To best enjoy this video, double click on it so that it goes to You Tube and then watch it on as large a screen as possible.
ENJOY>>>>>>>>>>
OK….I know that you are going to get tired of these, but my husband and I are having SO much fun watching and listening to the finches!!!
Just before this video started, the Mama bird was cleaning up the nest and two of the babies kept poking their heads above the nest edge. ……so cute!!! When the Dad arrives, he feeds all four of the babies (we have finally determined that there are four) and also feeds Mom. She is VERY loud during the feeding time. We can hear them all thru our house and both run to the door when feeding time begins.
I took this video this morning, right before a cat tried to scale the door and get to the nest. Fortunately, Michael saw what was going on and shooed it away. After some thought, we decided to try to find something slick to put over the door so that the cat wouldn’t have anything to climb. I toodled off to my favorite Lowes store and the salesman helped me to find a sheet of paneling that has a really slick surface. He cut it to the correct size and we taped it to the front of the door. So far, no more cats.
By the way, I really am doing a little bit of sewing and will hopefully post that soon!!
