HOW can you folks deal with birds day in, day out? YIKES! My hat's off to ya, you have a lot more patience than I do with all those feathers!
I spent a couple hours last night preparing a new peacock for skeletal work, and man those feathers get everywhere! Where do you even make your first incision? geeeeez! Everytime I do a bird I start out *trying* to save the skin.. the only way for me to get better at skin work is practice right? Danged if I can get the feathers to stay on the skin - LOL! My mammals are getting better, they don't look as hacked up as they used too. I'm still not doing anything more than practicing their removal in one piece.
I have more and more respect for all of you who work with skins with every critter I mangle - haha! Keep up the good work.. I'll stick with reproductions, bones and habitat ;)
Return to Bird Taxidermy Category Menu
well.... first off lets just say, we're all glad that birds have A Lot of feathers, and they can loose MANY before they aren't salvageable.... hehe
It gets better with time!
But look at you! If you only knew how many times I've spent countless hours trying to cast things.... so Raven.. it's a two way street! The respect is more than mutual!
Jon~
Im with John on this one thank god for feathers..
Hey Raven anytime ya want to come down and spend a little time in the shop with me,C'mon down always got room at the bench for ya.....I even have a extra bird or two for ya..
Sure would be cool to get John up here we could get him casting heads...
Make a longer belly Incision and severe base of the neck
Instead of tail butt first!Thats the secret to birds
another secret is don't swish them in soap water when you wash
just dip and wash and dip in a rinse and let dry on paper toweling
for being able to deal with all these little bones and putting them together correctly like a jig saw puzzle. I love doing skulls, but I can't see myself sitting there with tweezers and glue and trying to figure out where all these vertebrates and ribs belong. Give me feathers, hair, or scales any time of the day, just keep all them little bones.
Oh yeah one more thing Raven, I assume you put them bones in the right places. Remember what they did to the Iguanodont when they first discovered it? LOL
Everytime we build an iguanodon at work - one of us always slaps a thumb on top of the nose - LOL! It's just GOTTA be done - haha! Of course we put it in the proper position before shipping.. but that little bit of nostalgia is just too much fun to resist ;)
And I *hope* all my bones are always in place *gulp*. Some critters are harder than others. Carpal and tarsal elements are always a pain on anything smaller than a deer - especially when the hands and feet have been macerated! Hopefully I'll make it to the WTC this spring to enter some skeletal stuff.. Im not holding my breath though - I had planned to go 2 years ago and it didn't happen then either...