Babies in the Garden

Apart from the background and the nest this little piece is all thread painted directly onto the substrate backing. We have a large garden and each year there is an abundance of nesting going on. For several years the same blackbird nested and raised her family behind the Virginia Creeper on the side of the dining room so it is always a joy to be able to peer in and see the changing stages. Mumma bird didn’t mind me at all but poppa bird was much more cagey and would sit, with his beak full of worms, in the tree outside the dining room and then, when he thought he was unobserved, dive in to feed those hungry mouths. Because there was a window just above the nest it was quite easy to look in and see the development and how, when the parent birds were away, the nestlings sat quiet and still at the bottom of the nest. Any semblance of disturbance and hungry mouth appeared expecting it to be parent birds with food.

The thrush was an interesting experiment as I used variegated thread and had to manipulate the colour changes to get the speckles on the breast.

The nest has been made from some fibrous florist shop find. Until I did the Gypsies from Bagra this was the largest thread painting I had attempted.