I'm mounting a male hooded megerganser and was going to use a fake head. Do i invert the head through the neck or skin him through the bill like other ducks?
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I think if you're going to use a fake head I would skin it through the head. You can take it down like a pheasant because their heads are smaller but I think I would do the other.
When the bird is posed the way I want it, my next step is to set the eyelids. But before I do that,I put caulk in a syringe and carefully insert it through the eyelids. Starting with the syringe tip in the birds forhead under the skin just above and behind the base of the bill, I start injecting the caulk and work toward the nape of the neck. Make sure you use enough caulk, but don't use too much(this will come with practice). Very carefully slide the syringe out of the eye opening, clean the tip off with a cloth and repeat on the other side of the head. Then I take my modeling tool again and forward brush on the whole crest while gently pressing down. This gets the caulk all in the quills for better hold. Then I back brush a couple times and by now your duck should be looking pretty spiffy. PS Before you do any of this work on the crest, back brush the crest with your modeling tool a couple times to make sure the quills and tracts are aligned. I have had great success with this method on hooded mergs and wood ducks. I've only tried this with natural heads, but it should work with fake heads too. Hope this helps!