A Hawk, a Cat, and a Card

Well I have discovered two reasons why we have fewer birds at our bird feeders – besides the bitter cold weather.  They have a tendency to head for the bush and stay there when it’s this cold.

Here’s one of them.

Yup, a hawk. It is either a Cooper’s Hawk or a Short Shinned Hawk that likes to sit on our back fence right where the feeders are. These two hawks are very difficult to tell apart, except for their tail…and he didn’t turn around for me to get a shot of his tail. These photos were taken through the glass so not as sharp as they could be, but not bad either.

Then about half an hour later I looked out and we had this sitting on the fence.

Yup, a neighbour’s cat. Not sure who it belongs to but it well fed! That is one big cat. Joe opened the back door and it took off. The birds will be back once the coast is clear.

 

A couple of years ago in the summer I noticed we had no birds at the feeders but didn’t see any hawk or cat on the fence. Odd, I thought. Then a few minutes later I heard blue jays squawking, and then more squawking. So I stepped outside and looked over at the neighbour’s huge elm tree. There was a hawk sitting in the tree and for some reason the blue jays decided they did not want him there and started dive bombing him…..and squawking. The squawking must have been a call for help because pretty soon we had about 20 or more blue jays arriving and squawking and dive bombing the hawk. The hawk finally gave up and left, but so did the blue jays! They didn’t want to sit in the tree but they didn’t want the hawk there either. Nature at his best or weirdest? I’m not sure which. Which ever it was it I was glad to have witnessed it.  

Now for the card. I needed some birthday cards for ladies and I was in a card making mood so I ended up making quite a few of them.

I love my Inkadinkado stamps and decided to pull some out. I stamped and embossed this one on white cardstock and then sponged several distress inks over it while it was still in the Spellbinder die. The card base was made out of that burnt salmon cardstock and then I used the other half of it to die cut the large Spellbinder die to glue the image too. A small left over piece was used to die cut and emboss the butterflies with a Stampin’ Up die. Then I sponged Yellow Mustard Distress ink over the embossed areas, glued a small butterfly on top of the large one and then glued it to the card. A small gem was glued to the middle to add just a hint of bling.

Still bitter cold here so I’m heading back to the upper studio to work on the Don’t But Me quilt.

Cheers

Violet