Birds of Inwood

This blog post is for the everyday bird photography hobbyist who may want to see their favorite bird photos displayed around the home or to give as gifts. This post on DIY photo crafts projects could be useful for professional wildlife photographers employed by National Geographic, but they are not my target audience.

Bird photography is a pleasurable and addictive hobby, often resulting in the accumulation of thousands of images. Digital albums prove to be a useful resource for birders, allowing comparisons of bird activity over time. Excellent photographs of individual bird species could be submitted for various publications, the Macaulay Library, or in competition to the National Audubon Society. Many birders post their favorites on social media.

In this post, I’ll show you my favorite ways to take bird pix off the computer and into the material world. Of course, sending off your excellent photos to a professional lab for proper prints remains an option. Also, professional framers do an excellent job in presenting the work. 

These DIY ideas come in handy during prolonged heat waves or rainy weather. If the weather were great, you would be outside birding! 

We begin with questions about your bird photography habits and general attitudes about crafting.

Question #1. Do you occasionally take photographs of birds? Have you ever shared them on Facebook or Instagram? Are these pictures still on your phone or computer? Do you have some empty spaces in your home or areas that could use some work? OK. Keep reading.

Question #2. Are you a crafter or have inclinations to work with your hands and make things for gifts or for the home? Do you already have a designated shelf for crafts supplies? 

More for Question #2. Do you happen to own any of the following?

• A functional inkjet or laser printer
• A jar of Mod Podge
• Foam brushes
• A paper cutter or trimmer
• Small craft knife
• Glue sticks
• Some sort of acrylic sealer, either spray or to use with applicators.
• Small empty jars of jam or preserves for holding liquids.
• Packs of glossy or matte sticker paper made by companies such as Avery or Make Market.

If you have answered “Yes” to Question #1 and “Yes” to at least some of the items in Question #2, then read on. This post is about a variety of crafty ways to repurpose photographs of any sort in everyday life. This is a bird blog, so the subject matter will not be surprising. 

Go big! 

Enlarge the photos as posters. The process of tiling photos may take trial and error or experimentation. Use standard image processing software or printing options to break up the image into separate images for printing. Search online for websites to “rasterize” the image. Export the image as a pdf file.

Test the designs with mockups on plain copy paper. I’ve used the high-quality setting for printing so the colors come close enough to the original image.

Trim and tape the edges together on the back for the full image, or go ahead and leave them with the tiled look. I like the tiled look because the images mimic window panes.

Use wall putty to put up the individual sheets. This is a low-stakes approach, as I may change my mind tomorrow or next season.  

Testing the idea: I decided to spruce up my small NYC kitchen with a photo of a park path in Inwood Hill Park and a couple of my Red-tailed Hawk pictures. The overall mood is autumnal, with muted golds, browns, reds, and greens. Pay attention to lighting, too, with an emphasis on natural sunlight. Additional woodsy lighting fixtures and potted plants enhance the overall biophilic interior design.

What is “biophilic” interior design? This growing new design trend is about taking elements of nature into indoor spaces. 

I spend some time birdwatching from this kitchen. Across the street is a tall tree on a high mountain of rock, and I’ll often see a Red-tailed Hawk or a Cooper’s Hawk in the tree. Birds alight on the fire escape. Hundreds of House Sparrows have made home on the side of a brick apartment building. It’s a Mesa Verde for sparrows.

With the hawks in place on the wall, I added some Ospreys in flight in the overhead space to give a sense of movement and height. I may still add more pictorial elements, pushing the boundary between a novel kitchen interior and a full-blown art installation.

If the test placement of the tiles looks good, you can then reprint them on better paper and perhaps mount them on foam core.

Go small! 

Displaying large pictures of hawks may not be for everyone, I realize. 

Small is good, too. Resize and print out small squares of your images, and affix them on cut foam core, tiles, or small prepared canvases. Sometimes a glue stick works just fine. Seal when finished if used as coasters. Mod Podge is good for this task. For wall art, just put them up with a little putty. The combination of lightweight foam core pieces and putty is surprisingly strong.

Make gifts! 

Stickers for everyone! Make stickers on prepared sticker paper and affix them on various surfaces. Stickers naturally go well on tumblers for a personalized camping vibe. Make clear stickers, too, for drinking glasses, cups, candles, or any transparent surface.

I’m fond of the pictures on glass candles, the kind you find in the grocery store as votives. You should be able to find plain ones without a saintly image. As the candle burns, the image on the candle will glow. Many colorful birds would work well for the candle sticker project. Some birds tend to glow already. Baltimore Orioles, Red-winged Blackbirds, or Scarlet Tanagers would look stunning on candles.

Making photo cards is another great way to share your favorite bird photographs. Look for Strathmore Photo Frame Cards. The art supply manufacturer makes quality materials, and the paper allows personalization with original artwork.

Note on printer settings: Printers vary in settings, but make sure to choose the right type and size of paper and to print on the highest quality setting. Also, try to make note of printing the smaller images with at least a 300 pixels/inch resolution. The craft tiles and photo cards turned out awesome, I think, by paying attention to these details.  

Once you’ve started these craft projects, many ideas will rush forth – wall calendars, decoupaged boxes, bookmarks, greeting cards, invitations, and so on and so forth.

Have fun! Feel free to comment, share this post, or bookmark it for a rainy day. I’m on Threads and Instagram, too, if you would like the follow the conversations there.

Cover: The crafts table with printouts, materials, and craft supplies. All original bird photos by Teri Tynes, many published on this website. For more about the photography here, please read Continuous Captures: Photographing the Birds of Inwood.

July 2025 Sightings page

The July 2025 page is here. Marsh life and wading birds should liven up birdwatching walks this month.  

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