Blog Archives
Plover Painting – using nail polish
Good morning all! It’s gorgeous here, after a few days of bleak and rain (don’t get me wrong, we desperately needed the rain, and I WAS doing a rain dance, but the sun is nice too..) and we just had a moderately lengthy, rolling earthquake so I’m feeling rather wired. Pleased to report that not ONE bottle of polish fell off my shelves. Now I need to think of some kind of barrier to keep them safe… hmmm. Any thoughts?
Ok, no time for a lengthy post, so I thought I’d quickly show you a tiny painting I did using nail polish, on the glass of a photo frame. It’s my first attempt at this, and I really quite liked it.
backgrounds not finished, but shows the tiny size of it 
It’s a spur-winged plover
with flowers (from DDP Bzz Bzz) and Daily Lacquer Makoto among others
I did like how you can lift it, and it becomes quite translucent. Not sure how to go about getting rid of those gaps between background and bird without ruining some of the translucence… smaller brushes, perhaps. I was using the nail polish brush and man was it hard to get any detail in.
don’t much like the messiness, but it’s good to know what I have to improve!
This is with my mentor at The Learning Connexion now, hopefully she’ll send it back later. Even more hopefully she’ll acknowledge that my nail polish collection can, in fact, be almost arty
Have a great, non shaky day!
Ami 
Plovey’s Back!
And he came back with ATTITUDE. Teenagers. Sigh.
He’s just hanging out in the garden now, completely free range, hunting insects. I called him for food and he came flapping over for breakfast, so that’s exciting. Ideally I’d love him to hang around a bit, go do his own thing, but come back for food every now and again. That would be awesome
Those baby days are gone so fast...
And just for fun – another photo of Shaggy as a chick, wearing his harness.
Born free... then harnessed with ribbon. The humanity!
Shaggy’s run away from home :(
So… last night we discovered my plover has run away from home. We’ve noticed he’s (I don’t actually know if it’s a he or a she, but I have always thought he’s a boy bird – could be the suit and mask combo.) been escaping from the garden enclosure, but despite all our efforts we haven’t found where from. Up until last night we always found him, or he came back when I called.. but nothing. And not today, either. I’m trying not to fret, this was obviously what he wanted, but he can’t fly properly and he’s only half grown.
Like any teenager leaving home, I guess I have to focus on what I did do – I did try to fix his wings. I did feed him. I did take him into the garden with me often and showed him how to find insects to eat. I even, at one stage, rigged him up a little harness from some material and a ribbon, so he wouldn’t escape while we went a-hunting for bugs together.
Yes, I really did. It worked, but he wasn't a fan.
I hope he’s ok. I hope he survives, and thrives, and meets another androgynous plover and is happy – and if he comes back for the occasional bit of food and tells me of his adventures I’d be happier still. Be careful, Shaggy! I’ll miss you, you clown of a bird.
Spur-winged Plover – meet Shaggy!
Friendly but not tame - and was running free in the house. Not a good look!
Introducing Shaggy, my half-grown plover! Named for the artist who sang Mr Bombastic (ok, especially for the first line… Mr Lover Lover… as soon as I acquired the baby plover all the songs with ‘lover’ in them became changed to ‘plover’. As you do. Ok, as I (and my family!) do. So, after a few rounds of “Mr Plover Plover” between myself and Sister V, he had earned his name.
Image from http://my.opera.com/Wulpen/albums/showpic.dml?album=8372052&picture=120996042 AMAZING photos, check it out!
Shaggy is a Spur-Winged Plover, they are naturalised to New Zealand – in Australia they are called Masked Lapwings, just to confuse the issue! They make some amazing noises, from a squark, to a trill and peep, all the way to that scary ‘Ring Wraith’ noise that you hear after dark. People don’t like them because of that noise, but that’s a bit sad. Most people I know make much worse noises. Plovers look like penguins, sometimes. If you’ve ever driven down the road and had to do a double-take because you saw ‘penguins!’ in the middle of a landlocked paddock, it was most likely plovers. Or possibly the penguins from Madagascar.
My cousin’ F’ rescued Shaggy from the cat – I’d estimate (based on similarities to chicks!) that he would only have been a few hours old. I was stealing lemons from the tree when I heard the baby bird noise, and found him – he’d leapt out of his box on the dresser, and onto the floor. I would have asked permission to permanently borrow him, but no-one was home (hence the lemon raiding), so I just took him. (In my defence, I had a set-up all ready from the last lot of chicks inside, so I was better prepared than they were, otherwise I wouldn’t have stolen him! Maybe. He was awfully cute.)
I kept him alive by feeding him worms and slaters (woodlice) for the first week, and it was hard work, he ate so much! Then I utilised good old Vet Google, and found a recipe for feeding plovers – which worked, in that he stayed alive and grew very quickly, but didn’t work in that he developed Angel Wing – where the protein in the food forced his feathers to grow so fast that it has warped the wing bones. Argh! Good intentions.. off we go… trotting down to Guilt Hell.
See how the black primary feathers stick out? They shouldn't. 
[Please note - that is a bit of rubbish on the ground behind Shaggy, not Plovey Poop. It could have been, though. Birds are MESSY.]
And then I met Dawne and her friendly sidekick from the Bird Rescue centre out towards Whanganui – wow, what a wealth of knowledge these women have! She helped my with a better diet for my Shaggy – basically you cook up mixed veges, and puree them in a blender (or with a stick blender). That’s important, otherwise they pick out the corn and leave the rest, and that can cause other problems down the track. Then I mix in a packet of cat food. That means Shaggy gets vegetables (they eat vegetation and seeds as well as insects) and protein. She also showed me how to bind his wings to try and correct the Angel Wing. Sadly, it hasn’t worked, and I’ll contact her again shortly to see if I should rebind.
If you have an injured or baby bird, you can contact NZ Bird Rescue for advice and/or help. Their website is www.birdrescue.org.nz , facebook profile is http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Zealand-Bird-Rescue-Charitable-Trust/104318996316012 . If you live in the Manawatu, you could try calling the Massey University Vet clinic for help. If you are from somewhere else in NZ, a list of bird rescue centres can be found on http://www.nzbirds.com/more/centres.html – be aware that they are usually extremely busy with their birds, so a few of the links to other websites don’t work, and it’s best to phone them rather than email.
At the moment Shaggy lives in my small fenced garden, and seems happy enough, although sometimes he breaks out and comes visiting. He’s a real character, not tame but friendly, and I hope to be able to fix his wings so he can fly properly, and then he can choose whether he wants to stay here, or fly free somewhere where hopefully someone won’t shoot him, just because they can. Wish me (and him!) luck!
