Thinking outside the box

 I've been trained in traditional embroidery, and one of the hardest things to do is to break out of that mindset, even though I want to experiment I keep going back to traditional methods! And I'm not yet experienced enough to use traditional method  'creatively'. Anyway, I've done the beak in leather.........

Bird's beak

.........and the grasses heads are in assorted beads.

Grasses

Bird's breast

The breast is done with long and short stitch in single strand DMC, and the shadow under the head is silver passing done in or nue. 

I'm still thinking about the leaves on the grasses.... tick, tick!