Feathers

Judy Enright, 54, is a professional artist, currently exhibiting in Chicago. Usually she works in oils. But recently she tried something a little different: genuine bird feathers.Like much artistic inspiration, it was sort of a fluke.She lives in a small town in Michigan called Brighton. The area has many lakes, ponds and streams. So migratory birds frequently stop there. And they loiter in her yard because she feeds them.Birds shed feathers and this led to a hobby. About 10 years ago, she started collecting the feathers and saving them in shoe boxes.

Southern Living magazine named Fells Point 's Birds of a Feather one of the top three whiskey bars in the South today. The magazine's description of the bar keeps it appropriately simple: "Hole-in-the-wall Scotch bar with 120 single malts. " A Lagavulin, neat ($15), is recommended by the publication. Alicia Horn and her late husband John opened the bar at 1712 Aliceanna St. roughly 30 years ago. They once served food, but scotch has been the main priority for years.

In defense of Vice President Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot a wealthy campaign contributor while hunting quail over the weekend, the two species can be easily confused. Here, then, is a primer, for Cheney and hunters and non-hunters everywhere, on how to differentiate between the two. Bobwhite Quail: Scientific name, Colinus virginianus. Wealthy Campaign Contributor: Cloutus politicus. Quail: 8 inches to 11 inches long and weighing about half a pound; reddish-brown feathers are mottled with black, white and gray to help blend into surroundings and avoid predators.

With the possible exception of Mayan calendar followers and all others who expect the world to end in a matter of hours, is there a gloomier bunch around metropolitan Baltimore than Ravens fans? Rarely in the history of professional sports have people with so little to grouse about made themselves so miserable. It can't be a Baltimore thing. Just three months ago, this city was thrilled over the unexpected good fortune of a hometown team that hoped to - in the final days of its season - capture a playoff spot.

Critter counts. We've been doing them since Howdy Doody was a 2-by-4, from swans a-swimming and geese a-laying to Dr. Seuss' red fish and blue fish. This year is no different. Hearty bands of volunteers will be tromping around this season, sizing up the populations of bird species and taking stock of the traditional spawning grounds of yellow perch. Both groups could use a couple more boots (and waders) on the ground. Tuesday starts the 105th annual "Christmas Bird Count" sponsored by the National Audubon Society and billed as the nation's oldest and largest citizen-run science project.

As a volunteer cleanup crew in Finksburg disposed of the last of 20 trash bags of litter collected along Route 91 near Route 140, something rustled and squawked in a clump of tall grass. Volunteer Neil Ridgely followed the sound and found an injured great blue heron, the long-legged avian whose likeness adorns many Maryland license plates. Herons grow several feet tall, with feathers accounting for most of their weight. They are graceful, skittish and decidedly unfriendly. This bird threatened its prospective rescuers with its foot-long beak.

TRAPPE -- For 30 years in a converted garage at a crossroads about halfway between Trappe and Easton, William Woodrow "Woody" Bramble Jr. has been doing the dirty work for Eastern Shore hunters. Right now, they are bringing geese to Bramble's Waterfowl Cleaning Service to be plucked, cleaned and bagged -sometimes all in less than 30 minutes - and made ready for the oven or freezer. When it comes to his rather messy craft, Bramble is downright blase. Livers and other slimy innards, assorted webbed feet and wings don't faze him. Feathers?

Chinese fossil hunters have discovered a new creature that's as potentially significant as it is just plain strange: a four-winged dinosaur that swooped through the sky. "It's weird, no question," said Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, College Park. While scientists don't yet know quite what to make of this bird-like beast, they speculate it could represent a previously unknown stage of avian evolution. The fossil is also adding new wrinkles to one of the most fascinating evolutionary enigmas of all - how did birds first learn to fly?

WASHINGTON -- To help figure out what downed an Air Force radar plane in Alaska in September at the cost of 24 lives, investigators shipped some of the debris to Roxie C. Laybourne in Washington. She examined the clues. The clues were feathers.Ms. Laybourne has spent 36 years at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History solving mysteries involving birds. She was able to confirm in an hour or so what investigators suspected: that a flock of Canada geese had flown into the engines of the Air Force E-3 AWACS.

On April 9, 2003, CORA I. FEATHERS WHEELER (nee Holden); beloved wife of the late John E. Feathers and William Wheeler; devoted mother of Fred Feathers, Eddie M. Feathers and the late Myrtle Widner; dear sister-in-law of Marie Holden, of Frederick, MD. Also survived by numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. A Funeral Service will be held at the family owned Leonard J. Ruck, Inc. Funeral Home, 5305 Harford Road (at Echodale), on Saturday, 11 A.M. Interment Gardens of Faith Cemetary.

The city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland have an ongoing love affair with the football Ravens, and rightly so. We have seen the Hall of Fame players, the future Hall of Famers, and some very dedicated organizational personnel represent the purple and black. The pride runs deep, from 80-year-old seniors to their pre-teen grandkids. There is an obvious buzz in the air the days following a victory, such as the nail-biter the Ravens just won over the Brady Bunch Patriots. We shed some tears and admired the fierce loyalty of Torrey Smith who bravely chose to play hours after learning of his younger brother's death ("Winning tribute," Sept.

Five miles separate the workplaces of Brad Wilson and Ken Johnson. In their long and distinguished coaching careers, they've walked a lot further than that distance on their respective sidelines. Wilson is beginning his ninth year as the head football coach at Westminster High School. Johnson, the dean of Carroll coaches, is in his 10th season at Winters Mill and his 19th overall in the county. The two preside over football programs that have become successful largely because of their abiding commitment to the young men they've influenced through the years.

Mockingbirds, sparrows and squirrels have been feasting on the few remaining apples hanging from our Yellow Delicious tree. I purposely left the apples on the tree, you see, to give them a helping hand. The apples won't be hanging from the tree much longer, though. So shortly, I'll set-up our winter holidays animal-feeding station, a homemade holiday wreath that's stuffed with blemished apples that are in winter storage and won't keep. The first holiday wreaths were made by the ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians.

Few places are left unexplored for Jennifer Petrin Johannes. Over the years, the 38-year-old public high-school art teacher has been to six continents, 27 countries and 43 states. She also shares her passion for traveling with her students, taking them on trips to Egypt, China and Australia. Johannes grew up in Demarest, N.J., but has called Pigtown her home for the last seven years. When she isn't traveling, she enjoys making jewelry and cooking. Currently, she and her students are shipping over 3000 books to a school in Kenya that she visited in 2010.

Reginald Dowdy separated the strand of his customer's hair and slid a hollow bead-sized copper object to her scalp, leaving a black-and-white striped feather hanging. Dowdy's client, April McGill-Willhide, tilted her hair to the side and examined the bunch of multi-colored feathers that now outlined the side of her face. “It looks fantastic,” she exclaimed. “They're wonderful!” McGill-Willhide, a hair salon assistant, has a number of feather-accented earrings but wanted something more permanent that would allow her to look more current and chic.

Wayne Smith is standing at the Weber gas grill in Clifton Park brushing barbecue sauce over a batch of jerk chicken — a Caribbean signature dish in a weekend of cultural signatures at the 30th annual Caribbean Carnival Festival. He's at the edge of a circle of vendors, but the jerk cookery puts him at the center of the spirit of things on the first day of the two-day festival. It's about 2 p.m. in full sun with a temperature about 90 away from the grill, so who knows how hot it is right here where he's working in back of the Wat U Makin Jamaican stand, where they figured on selling about 100 pounds of chicken this weekend?

Janice Mcculley smiles when she recalls the customer who came into her Bolton Hill hardware store, seeking a distinctive paint shade for his bar. "He wanted to paint it Ravens' purple," says Mcculley, whose family has owned Belle Hardware for 33 years. "So we custom-mixed a purple color. He just loved it. " With the NFL season underway, many Ravens fans are eager to show off their purple pride. Expect to see all manner of team memorabilia in basements, dens and family rooms across the region.

Much like the game itself, watching football is a team sport. The crashing tackles, hard-fought yardage and nail-biting field-goal attempts are all the more intense when you're in the company of a hundred or so other hard-core Ravens fans. And Sunday's playoff game, when the Ravens take on the New England Patriots, promises to be a bruiser. Baltimore restaurants and bars are gearing up for the game with food and drink specials galore. One lucky fan will get to sit on a couch and down free beer and wings during the game at Luckie's Tavern . In Timonium, Padonia Station plans to serve more than half a ton of hot wings.