Baby pics

Some more screenshots of newborn E15.

Showing off teeny tiny tongue barbs!

And gravity.

We've got a wiggler

Two days after the initial pip, the eaglet has hatched! (link to live stream)

Good morning, Harriet!

Good morning, and welcome to the world, E15!

More hatch

The first of the two eggs of the Southwest Florida Bald Eagle nest's second clutch is currently hatching!

The egg tooth on the chick's beak is seen moving in the pip on the shell in closeups here.

Making those less famous raptor claws

Finger claws, that is.

De-mulleting

More work on the Skyefigure. Bringing out the epoxy putty now.

Bobblehead sightings

Peeks at the two new hatchlings at the Trio Eagles nest. There are pictures of the eaglets being fed a fish, but not very graphic.

Starr is at the nest brooding, and has built a grass fort around the nest bowl to shield the babies. One peeks out when she gets up to adjust her position and add more grass.

Hatch at Trio nest

The first egg of the season has hatched at the Trio Eagles nest!

The nest bowl is deep and well cushioned, so the little fluffball might be difficult to catch a glimpse of for now, but should you happen to tune in during a brooding shift change, you might see the baby peeking out. It should be long enough from the hatching for us to start to be able to catch the parents feeding the baby, too.

Congrats to mom Starr and dads Valor1 and Valor2!

edit: a glimpse:

edit 2: Two hatches, actually!

The Southwest Florida nest is also entering pip watch for their second clutch in five days.

Starting to look like a raptor

Bulking up the neck and the back of the head to the approximate shape they have under the feathers, and other additions.

:p

Attempted rainbow?

So small and faint that I'm probably only able to see it because of my gay superpowers.

Finally in one piece

Skyefigure has a head on her shoulders now! Here's how that happened.

I inserted a 1mm aluminum wire in the hole I'd made on the underside of the head, cut off some clay around the wire sticking out of the torso to have more room for the twisting, twisted the head's wire around the torso's 2mm one, and wrapped a bit of foil around it all.

Then covered the aluminum mess with clay, and smoothed it into both ends of the neck, and posed the head a bit before baking.

At this point the neck is just a column to connect the head to the body, more clay around it to be added later, for the proper shape of the neck and details. Since the wire wasn't baked into the head originally, this seam would not be very secure without baking it at this point, before doing anything more to it.

"How would it know to do that?"

(Jurassic World spoilers)

The Indominus rex is shown to have some extraordinary abilities the humans around her seem to not have known about, and which prove quite useful for escaping and avoiding capture.

How did she realize to do all of this, and what exactly does she actually do?

Arming the raptor

 So, wings.

The bigger step that's eyes

 I used the end of a plastic straw (not the one I've cut into a feather stamp) as a cookie cutter to make a slit pupil out of black clay, and mixed red and yellow clay into an orange to accompany the yellow on the iris. Then I did my best to follow this cat eye toturial, so I made the colours into thin sheets to wrap around the pupil.

Inbetween bigger steps

More fluff to Skyefigure's tail, and widening the ribcage a bit. Some of the longer feathers added to the tail are again from the batch I made separately, attached with liquid clay. Wings are still unattached and the head still under construction.

Currently construction is adding brow archs and a bit more fluff to the face, too (with pretty much every previously mentioned tool I've used for drawing on clay), while leaving room for the eyes and just leaving the back of the head for later. Also adding a little bit of vaguely scale-like texture to the snout with... surface of a lemon juice bottle designed to look like a lemon.

Pipes

Raptor arms

Two pieces of 1mm aluminum wire bent at a few places.
Somehow I'll... make some wings... out of youuu!

Precarious