For the Birds

There have been a few things going on besides messing with the bird camera the past few days. For those of you who can't stand to see another bird picture, I thought I'd start with my quilting endeavors today. Yesterday I got started quilting the White Trees quilt...which has birds...thus, the title of my post. (Always thinking, even when it isn't obvious.)

I'm working on the blocks right now, which I'll show you in a minute. I'm thinking of quilting bird tracks into the narrow red border. Do you have trouble deciding what to do with the borders too? I can usually come up with something for the blocks, but the borders always leave me a bit bamboozled. I'm considering doing some snowflakes in the gray and white borders, but the red border...hm, I don't know....

Let me see if I can show you what I have in mind. I did some turkey tracks in a doll quilt last year that I modeled after the turkey tracks my long arm quilter, Erin Davis, did in this November block for Home is Where the Heart Is. You can see them in the sky. 

I'm thinking a sort of meandering row of bird tracks in that red border might be cute. And as I look at this block, I sort of like what she did in the brown border too. Maybe I'll do something like that. Hard to decide.

But to get on with what I did yesterday, I began by quilting snowflakes into the white areas between the trees.

And I quilted snow gathering in the branches.

It was kind of hard to keep my quilting organized since the blocks are off set from one another. I realized that I was going to have to go above and below and to the side of my blocks, rather than doing one block at a time, as I usually do.

I decided to quilt the trunk markings of birch trees into the trees, 

but I want to add a few more vertical lines to these as well. 

Eventually, I organized myself by outlining the trees while quilting the bark first, then quilting the snowflakes and the snow.

I was having trouble with this foot hooking the thread when I changed direction,

and so I switched it out for a closed foot. It helped some, but I'm having some tension problems.

I quit after doing these two blocks, so, ten to go.

And here's how it looks from the back, although that white thread on white fabric is a little hard to see.

So...now to the bird cam. As a few of you pointed out after yesterday's post, there could be some very stealth birds eating the peanuts. I think possibly they're using a Romulan cloaking device like those dastardly Romulans from Star Trek. On the other hand, there is this:

See that shadow on the ground in the image above? There is a bird sitting on the perch above the feeder, out of view of the lens. The camera detects the motion, but the bird is evading the camera.

Now look below, and you can see him getting ready to steal a peanut.

And here's a really great shot of him. (Running my facial recognition software now.)

Here's another scrub jay doing a rather stylized pose, I would say.

In this next image, the peanuts are nearly gone, but hm. Who is that marauding character?

I didn't check the pictures yesterday, but this morning, I left early to go have breakfast with my friend, Sue. We aren't walking these days because of my knee, so we've settled on having breakfast together for now. Before I left, I went out and switched the feeders again, reasoning that nobody was going to show up for an empty peanut feeder. So, with the camera trained on the suet feeder, look who showed up! 

Dang! It's the Flicker, but I had the camera aimed too low. Shoot. There was another image of him as well, but this one was better.

Today I'm going to physical therapy, and I'll go past the feed store and pick up some more suet cakes. I'm thinking I'm zeroing in on my most photographic prey for the time being, but this is my last suet cake. More bird pictures to follow.

As for physical therapy, I'm happy to report that I think my knee is ever so slightly improved. And with that, I've gotta run. Hope you're enjoying your Friday and that your weekend is wonderful.