So sometimes when I'm not at one of my regular computers and I want to check in here, I Google "Birds of Prey baltimore Orioles Message Board" and inevitably I come up with a link. I come across some other links, too, like this gem from a woodcarving message board:

[dohtml]<img src="http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j174/rjm6254/DSC00016-1-3.jpg" width=400>[/dohtml]

Check this one, from the same message board. These guys are amazing.

Those are fantastic carvings.

In Salisbury we have the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art and it is stunning to see some of the unbelievably life-like renderings they have of waterfowl carvings and decoys, old and new, and award winning carvings of song birds. It is a bit far for you to travel to see but it is a special place.

My 94 year old high school football coach, Charlie Berry, is a carver and docent at the museum. He still makes me run laps if I'm not paying attention.

The Ward museum is really impressive.

For some reason, this reminds me of the cartoons that used to grace the lower left hand column of The Sun's front page. Jim Hartzell (who designed the original Orioles bird) drew them. They gave the score of the previous night's Orioles game with some (usually repetitive) theme related to how the game went. For example, a pair of twins might be walking over a deflated oriole bird on the sidewalk. The picture of the bird with the impaled orange struck me as fitting that format.

This link from the O's web site gives an example sketch near the bottom of the page: http://mlb.mlb.com/bal/history/uniforms_logos.jsp

Jack, my grandmother was good friends with Steve and Lem. She has a couple of ducks they gave her here, and a set of bookends (ducks) they carved. Incredibly nice work.

I loved that sketch and was the first thing I look at while retrieving the Morning Sun.

You gotta love the Psycho Bird! He was one cool dude and still my favorite.

Maybe the next bird could be left-handed.

Those are great carvings.

You would also appreciate Albrecht Durer:

check out his work:

http://images.google.com/images?client=fir...snum=4&ct=title

Here is Wikipedia on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer

And: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/d/durer/index.html