So here's the contents of the bag shown yesterday.

This is my first attempt for the bird classically considered the harbinger of spring...though I've seen flocks of them in January. Fairly recently f2tE taught me how to distinguish the sexes: males, it turns out, have black heads, whereas the females have the same warm grey as on their backs.

Thompson enamels, glass. March 2013

I used raffia to style the bead—as a sort of ‘nest’ because I couldn't find any handy-tac, and it hadn't yet occurred to me to position the bead on a mandrel, like the green parrots.

Another view.

Obviously I need to do a little more work to capture the warm grey along the dorsal part of the bird, but I do like the soft blending—somewhat reminiscent of feathers—you can get with the powdered glass.

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