birds – KDD & Co

migration

By: Kate Davies Designs September 13, 2022September 13, 2022

birds, photographybirds, carbeth, home, housemartin, housemartins, nature, photography17 Comments

a farewell, until next spring

on not being sure

A squeaky toy? A rusty gate? How do we begin to learn about birdsong?

birds and feathers

By: Kate Davies Designs February 28, 2021March 21, 2021

birds, photographybirds, birdsong, photogrphy17 Comments

Tom creates images with an avian theme

Sterntaucher

By: Kate Davies Designs November 20, 2020November 20, 2020

birds, design, Kate Davies Designs10 Years in the making, birds, club, colourwork, design, inspiration, knitting, steeks, Sterntaucher21 Comments

Designing hand-knit garments (and clear instructions for others to follow) can involve a lot of compromising, a lot of accepting that, for a multitude of reasons the finished thing won’t turn out quite as you initially envisaged. But sometimes you design something that looks and feels exactly as you expected. This design started with a…

found feathers

By: Kate Davies Designs July 9, 2020July 9, 2020

birds, collaboration, Crafting Futures, photographybirds, Crafting Futures, feathers, found objects, landscape, photography28 Comments

I’ve been thinking about how I might incorporate local found materials into the pieces I’m making for my Crafting Futures collaboration with Pilar. So, for the past couple of months, I have been picking up the feathers I come across on my daily walks. I’ve not done anything special when gathering these feathers – I’ve…

magpies

By: Kate Davies Designs July 1, 2020July 1, 2020

birdsbirds, housemartins, magpies, summer, the indifference of birds46 Comments

It has taken a while for me to make my peace with magpies. For a long time, as a child, youth, and young adult, they were a creature I profoundly disliked. The reason for this was pretty simple: a magpie killed my tortoise, my only childhood pet, named Werner. So I came to regard magpies…

cuckoo watch

By: Kate Davies Designs May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

birds, landscapebirds, cuckoo, cuckoos, landscape, walking29 Comments

Though our landscape is full of the sound of cuckoos at this time of year, I’ve always found it quite difficult to actually see them. Their song carries a remarkably long way, and when I’ve followed the source of the sound and spotted one, it always seems to be sat up high on a far…

a spring walk

By: Kate Davies Designs May 3, 2020May 3, 2020

birds, video, walkingbirds, birthday, landscape, recording, sound, video, walk, walking40 Comments

Hello! As you may have gathered, our broadband definitely isn’t sorted out yet – in fact, Tom received a somewhat concerning text message from our provider reassuring us that our switchover was now scheduled to be completed “before June.” The currently patchy connection is certainly somewhat frustrating, but in the larger scheme of things, it…

April showers

By: Kate Davies Designs April 30, 2020April 30, 2020

birds, landscape, photography, Scotland, West Highland Waybirds, landscape, photography, rain, weather27 Comments

Hello! Our internet is very wonky at the moment, because our broadband is being “upgraded”. As we live in a rural area where connectivity has never been that great, the prospect of speedy wifi is really quite exciting . . . the only downside is a few days of slow internet, and some difficulty transferring…

cuckoo!

By: Kate Davies Designs April 20, 2020April 20, 2020

birds, video, walkingbirds, birdsong, cuckoo, walking51 Comments

(cuckoo by Edmund Fellowes) I’ve been thinking I might hear a cuckoo for the past few days, and yesterday (sunday), I decided to wear a GoPro camera during my early morning walk – just on the offchance that I might hear one, and would be able to record it for you. Imagine how excited I…

a reading week

By: Kate Davies Designs April 19, 2020April 19, 2020

art, birds, review, writingart, birds, nature, review, sleep, theory, writing24 Comments

Eric Ravilious, Cuckmere Haven (1939) Thinking about what I might write about here yesterday, it occurred to me that, despite the fact that reading takes up a fairly large proportion of my time, I’d never used this space all that much to talk about the different books that I enjoy. I think that part of…