Parrot Man Nest Hut - Part 1

Having found some smallish bird nests at the local craft store (the same ones where I got the eggs for my aerofauna), I decided it was time to try to make my idea for a Parrot Men nest hut a reality.

I started by going through my bag of fake foliage and found a couple of incredibly gnarled twig pieces. The had the look I wanted, but they were simple rubbery pieces for show only and had no sort of wire structure to them. I took these, cute them into shorter lengths, and wove them into the nest and formed a nice, visually appealing framework that looked like it might be the lower part of some larger framework holding up the roof of the nest hut. Once I had them in a configuration I liked I hot glued the bases into the nest and then super glued them at key points to secure them. In some cases, I added wire to add extra hold.

The next step was to make the roof and for this I turned to a technique I had read about on another blog involving using bits of old towel to simulate thatch. In this case I wanted to use it to simulate a less uniformed thatching of various materials to give the roof that savage, semi-civilized bird nest look, but be obviously different from the actual nest. Anyhow, I layered on several uneven, irregular layers of various pieces of old towel and then based coated them with a mix of black paint and PVA glue.

I'll post more pics as I make progress in shorter updates later. I've still got to figure out how I am going to do the perch veranda around the perimeter of the nest. After that's done it's just a matter of drybrushing and detailing (adding some sponge flock for moss and perhaps some sprigs of plastic plants to show jungle growth on the structure.

Have fun all,

-Eli