Cooper's Hawk

I have not been feeling very inspired lately with regard to my blip photos. I've been making due and today is no exception. I had a few lack luster photos on my camera and decided to see if I could get a few bird photos on the deck. So I put out some peanuts and waited... and waited. It was very quiet. Not a bird in sight. Then who should fly up into a tree across the alley but a Cooper's Hawk. He or she sat there and watched to see if anybody would show up for dinner, not their dinner but his. The birds being wise and watchful, stayed well away. I got some pretty rough photos of the hawk as he watched and then flew away. The birds were not coming until they recovered from the scare so I went in. Finally I decided to use the best of the bunch, still not great at all, and make a painting out of it. Hopefully I'll be more inspired tomorrow. Should make it clear that it isn't really a painting but instead a photo fiddled with using the Topaz Impressions plugin in Photoshop. This plugin really does make photos look like paintings. It has versions for several of the key impressionists' styles. I think it uses actual brush strokes and then allows you to change the parameters of them to your liking. It is the first Topaz plugin I bought and then during Black Friday I splurged on a whole set of them.