Grey Heron Skeleton

A local taxidermist had a freezer disaster and kindly asked me if I was interested in any of her stuff that was heading for the bin. Amongst the things I rescued was a heron, which I have been thinking for a while would be a great bird to add to my collection. Unfortunately, from the state of it, it was clear that it had been hit really hard, and then the legs had been run over. I've never even seen a dead heron, let alone had the opportunity to acquire one, so I thought it was worth giving it a go. Each noticeably broken bone was put in a separate bag for maceration, and once finished, degreased and bleached, some of the results looked like this:

 

So the next job was to try to repair each bone. for the leg bones, which were going to need to support all the weight, I put 3mm aluminium wire down the middle for strength. I superglued all the shards together, and then where there were missing parts or gaps used Milliput Fine White epoxy putty. I finished it off once set with a fine file and wet & dry paper. On the joints, some of which were badly destroyed, I put a large blob of milliput, and then carved it into shape once set with a Dremel and a knife. Although the sternum, pelvis, clavicle, coracoids and many of the ribs were broken to different degrees, fortunately all the vertebrae were untouched, so there was a good basis on which to build.

Several weeks of frustration later, I had the major bones and skull all back together:

 

So then it was just a matter of building the bird.

It all went together very well, but there were very few decent reference pictures that I could find.

There were a few minor bones missing - A couple of claws, a third digit and about half the ucinate processes. For the missing parts I either found some similar ones in my bone box, made them from Milliput or fashioned them from other spare bones.

The beak sheath was badly damaged and almost unuseable, but I managed to salvage it. There are a number of splits and breaks, and I did consider touching it up with paint, but in the end left it as it was.

Close inspection reveals all the faults, but overall I'm really pleased with the end result which looks fantastic in my cabinet.

 

.

 

.