Occipital Style Specimens

Dead Turkey Vulture at the field site. Unfortunately they weren’t salvageable.

I just adore these wings. The red and black is just so beautiful, and when they fly in life they flick their primaries out rhythmically so the red flashes in and out from the iridescent green.

This week is another zoo bird that’s been necropsied, though I don’t know the cause of death unfortunately. They’re a Red-crested Turaco (Tauraco erythrolophus).

There are perks to being willing to do a lot of sewing like getting to work on some beautiful unique birds. You can see that their abdomen has already been cut open and their organs removed. The neck and back of the head were also cut open. The back of the head was the most challenging to sew up but I’m still pleased by the final results.

Prep No.KHE119

Song Sparrow

Prep No.KHE119

Song Sparrow

Prep No.KHE118

Red-crested Turaco

Tauraco erythrolophus

Prep No.KHE118

Red-crested Turaco

Mostly it makes me very happy! I like knowing that the salvaged birds I turn into specimens will be valuable for science and education for centuries. I’m not sure about my current museum but the oldest bird specimen at the museum I started at was a Magpie from the mid-1800s from Germany, and many larger collections have even older specimens. I also love that each specimen is valued as an individual with all of its associated data preserved with it to help researchers and learners understand where it came from, so even a hundred years later someone will remember at least parts of their story.

Of course it’s still being around death a lot, and that’s an unavoidable truth but I don’t think avoiding that reality is good either. Sometimes a particular individual is particularly difficult, like a poisoned mother barn owl or a recent fledgling, or just the sheer number of animals that die in preventable human- caused ways (keep your cats inside or supervised!!!! And find ways to minimize window strikes). But mostly I’m glad to take care of and spend time with their bodies.

But honestly, I find working with live animals more emotionally exhausting. I work with live raptors too and I love it, but you’re fully responsible for keeping a living bird healthy and happy. And especially working with older physically disabled raptors, that can be challenging and stressful, especially when people disagree on the best way to ensure a bird has excellent welfare. You don’t have to worry about that with dead birds… they don’t have feelings and the worst has already happened.

Prep No.KHE118

Red-crested Turaco

I finished up pinning the workshop Barred Owl wings and wanted to show one more thing! Newly molted owl feathers are slightly pink and fluoresce under UV light, over time and exposure to sunlight this pink fades until the next year when the owls molt again. This trait can be used for helping age owls, because if they're under a year old all the feathers will be the same age (because they're growing in simultaneously) so all the feathers will be similarly pink. Older birds like this one molt a few feathers at a time so they can keep flying so the pink glow won't be consistent.

I feel like it doesn't really show up well in my photos (sorry) so I included a better photo under the break of a Long-earred Owl wing under black light.

One of the data points we take during prep is skull ossification. Baby birds start out with a thin single layer skull and as they age they develop a thicker two layers skull. Most orders of birds have a fully ossified skull when they fledge from the nest but passerines take a bit longer, so it can give us a lot of information about how old a bird is.

This Fox Sparrow died by hitting a window in December, and from the outside appeared identical to an adult bird, but because of the presence of a bursa near the cloaca and this partially ossified skull, I know it was a first year bird.

Incredibly, banders can determine skull ossification on a live bird by looking through the thin skin. I'm not entirely sure how they pull that off, because I typically have to remove the brain and look through the skull in the light to feel confident that I'm actually looking at a partially ossified skull. I do so many non-passerines that I don't get enough practice.

In the first photo, I circled the window section that appears transparent compared to the rest of the skull. I also included a diagram of the skull ossification process under the break.

Prep No.KHE104

Fox Sparrow

Passerella iliaca

Initially I thought that this pigeon might have had a crooked bill in life, but upon further inspection, I think this poor guy just managed to smack into something so hard that in addition to causing brain bleeding he bent his bottom mandible.

I think I was able to straighten it out pretty well while pinning, and also cover the bare patch on his neck that's common in windowstrikes. You can see a little bit of the bare skin in the photo below.

Prep No.KHE107

Rock Dove/Pigeon

Columba livia