GONE FISHING Sculpture

The Osprey is an accomplished predator, from a gauged distance the bird dives with wings back and talons forward, it is successful more times than not when fishing or it is hunting, well you decide what the right word should be, I'll just stick to what I do and that is crafting impressions of feathery wild life. I use copper sheeting and wire and in this case copper pipe for wing support. Starting with sketches of the size that I'm going to craft and making a scaled drawing on paper to follow, i proceed to cut heat and shape pieces to be brazed together until I have a full size bird in front of me with a flat wing span of 52 inches and weighing about 30 pounds in copper, the real bird only weighs about 4 pounds to finish this bird I coated with two coats of clear lacquer to keep the metal from oxidizing. If you look close you will see that the fish is the only support for this copper bird. Short story- Last year I was on a boat heading towards the mouth of the river, in front of us was a Osprey flying in front of the boat , it made a 180 degree turn folded it's wings an dove towards a movement in the water and seconds later came up with a nice size fish, everybody on the boat started clapping and that made me decide to craft this beautiful bird