Professor Smudge

Today’s weird bird was inspired by an online class called, “Creating Simple Characters.” The class is taught by Nelleke Verhoeff from the Netherlands and hosted by Carla Sonheim. Nelleke is known by her illustrations, “Red Cheek Factory,” and likes to give her characters red cheeks!

One of the assignments was to create faces with expression by smudging charcoal on your paper and then erasing it with a soft, rubber eraser. These faces appeared for me, I used Pan Pastels to give my characters red cheeks:

Of course I had to try a bird!

Professor Smudge teaching Family Life Etiquette…

Happy Weird Bird Wednesday!

Cheers! 🙂

A Wild Quacker…

There is a saying, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

Apparently, this person never heard of Weird Bird Wednesday…

This is a wild Quacker, like a wild card, uh, I mean duck!

YOU get to name it!

That is if you want to play along…

Happy Wild Duck Wednesday!  hehe

Cheers! 🙂

P.S.  No “fowl” language…haha

Rete Mirabile

This word is Latin for “wonderful net.”  It is pronounced –                                      rete mi·ra·bi·le (mĭ-rä’bĭ-lē)

It sounds like a bottle of wine to me….

Actually, this is what keeps duck feet from freezing in cold water.

According to Bird Note, “Rete mirabile is fine, netlike pattern of arteries that interweaves warm blood from a bird’s heart with the veins carrying cold blood from its feet and legs.  This interweaving warms the cold blood in these veins before it reaches the bird’s heart. This system keeps the bird’s legs and feet warm, even without leggings and slippers.”

And what about the tiny songbirds feet?  “This birds’ feet lack sweat glands and stay dry. So, there is no danger of them freezing to metal perches.”

Cheers!

D is for Daisy Duck!

Dazzling Daisy duck dabbles daffodils during doo-wop doozie!

Do-quack; do-quack – do!

Happy Easter to all of you!  🙂