I do some very nice bird work but struggle with areas on the Wood duck. One thing is getting the white feathers on the head to lay on top of the green and stay in a straight line. How is this done right, pulling the feathers up? Cualk? better bird?. I feel the head size is correct.
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Those feathers will line up in *decent* shape just with finger groomin, however,if you have some that are stubborn, then you need to get a large pin or needle and start lifing and placing the individual feathers. Obviously, it does help to have the head skin taxi'd into the correct postion. Check your ears, and also check your reference as to where the white chin patch starts and stops.. those are all good reference which will help you align things properly. Once that is done, there should be very little effort required to get the head stripes to line up properly.
Granted also, if the bird isn't quite through changing plumage and the feathers haven't reached their full length, then you may run into problems, which are no fault of your own, just the way it is gonna be at that stage of develpement.
Jon~
I have to say that almost every wood duck we see in taxidermy magazines or competitions are birds from a game farm that are in perfect feather. As regular taxidermists, we are lucky to ever get a woodie that has nice, full-grown feathers. This year was so horrible for me, when it came to the wood ducks. Not one of them had full feathers! So, if you think you are doing everything correctly, it could very well be that the duck you are working with is just not good enough!
Becky