#comorant

Rush:

Comorant

I think these are cormorants, but I'm not 100% sure right this moment... they seem to like showing off for the cameras though!

A snowy egret. Very beautiful and elegant, its brilliant white plumage a stark contrast to its surroundings.

A golden eagle's nest spotted on a cliff in Yosemite National Park. Sadly, no sightings of its occupant(s).

Steller's jays - so striking and bold! They're really not shy of humans in the slightest, which is just as well because they are very pretty to look at with their black and blue colouration.

A close encounter with a Common Raven in Yosemite. This fella's much larger than any crow I've seen in England! I was also lucky enough to see one of these guys drive a hawk out of its territory, but my picture-taking skills aren't quite up to the task of capturing such split-second events!

And here's the one, the only, San Franscis-cro. (don't boo it's a good pun)

I really wish I could have gotten some closer photos but there's only so much you can do with a camera phone from the early 2010s, sadly. Sorry if the quality on some of these isn't so good, but I was really excited to see so many different types of birb and wanted to snap/share as many as I could!

Hey everybody, long time no see—we’ve been dealing with hurricanes and vacations and I’ve been extremely worn down from work so I have not posted anything in the last two weeks.

But, since it’s early spooky season and I’ve finally had a chance to sit down, we are going to do a special post today and go over my collection.

My collection of “dead things”, as my husband likes to describe it.

I like to describe it as my natural history collection. It’s a collection I’ve been curating since I got go college, and I have either collected and cleaned them myself, or received them as gifts from others who share my strange hobby.  I have not personally killed any of these animals, however I’m sure some were road kill or were killed by barotrauma (if they were fish).  Also, these are not all from dead animals, I have a large collection of molts and shells as well.  For me, these are found objects, and I am giving them life again in my house.  If you are uncomfortable with the idea of animal bone collection and processing, I suggest you stop here.

If you have a morbid curiosity like I do, welcome.

Lets start with the bones.  On the first row we have what I think is a squirrel skull that I found on a beach (I’m not 100% sure because I don’t have any teeth from it) and a cormorant skull I found completely bleached and cleaned on a dock.  On the second row we have a pair of deer antlers I spent $2 on at an antique fair, we have an otter that I cleaned for my university that I was allowed to keep, we have rocky the raccoon, also from my university, a cat skull I found on a washed up beach (there were no tags attached, no tissue left, it could have been a pet or a stray, but considering we were in the middle of nowhere, there was no way to tell), and a Atlantic sharpnose shark jaw I cleaned while on a NOAA trip.  The back row we have a blacktip reef shark jaw from the same trip, and a red drum skull collected from a beach.  

Now, rocky is one of my favorites—we have a long relationship.  When I was in college, I took a mammalogy class and one of our assignments was to go find a dead animal and bring it in, dissect it, and clean it.  Like for a grade.  Our professor had tenure and was pretty eccentric, so he got away with it much to the chagrin of the president.  I found rocky on the side of a highway, while I was driving home to my parents’ house for fall break, and he looked pretty freshly dead, so I thought that would be the best way to go.  It didn’t stop him from stinking up my car though, and my mom was not pleased that I stuffed him in the basement freezer.  He made it back to school in a Styrofoam cooler, and I got an A on that assignment, and then we put all of our skulls in the “beetle tank” so that they could finish cleaning the skulls for us.  I forgot about it.  Fast forward to two years later, I was working for the graduate department while getting my graduate degree, and we were asked to clean out the “bone room” and process the skulls, and I found him, a tag with my name on it attached.  He came home to live me ever since.

Next we have the molts, all of which, with the exception of the sea urchin, all came from live animals that continued on living after they had shed their shells. On the bottom left we have my horseshoe crab molts, the larger one was collected on a fisheries survey I was on, the little one I found at a hotel beach in Florida.  Just above the horseshoe crabs, we have an urchin that I found in Maine—this one was likely smashed against the rocks by a seagull, because when an urchin dies, it usually doesn’t leave behind it’s spines. Next to it is the large, American Lobster, which came from the lobster at the aquarium I used to work at!! And then, in the bottom right is a spiny lobster molt.  Spiny lobsters come from the south eastern united states, but our aquarium collected a spiny lobster in North Carolina.  She was one of my favorite animals I worked with in the aquarium.

Then we have the full bodied organisms that were preserved fully.  We have European hornets pinned in the bottom block, which are from a small project I worked on as an undergrad.  These are invasive to the states.  The large blue jar contains a baby sandbar shark. My friend (who is also a biology nerd) found this one for me at a thrift store, so WHO KNOWS how it got there originally—but I gave her a new home none the less.  The last three small jars are fish and invertebrates that were collected on my trip studying marine plastics in the Pacific.  In one is a Velula velula, or a by-the-wind sailor, which is a small siphonophore (similar to a jelly fish, or like a small man-o-war) that “sails” on the surface of the water with it’s little biological sail!  The next one is a myctophid, which I’ve covered in previous posts, but it’s a small, very numerous deep sea fish with bioluminescent photophores on it’s belly.  The last is a dragonfish or a viperfish, which is another deep see fish similar to an angler fish, but it’s bioluminescent lure is on it’s chin.  

I’ve been putting this collection together for almost 10 years now, and they all have their little spots on my shelves at my home.  I just find these pieces of biology so beautiful, and I want to give these animals a second life.  I’m not just into dead animals, I have a 55 gallon saltwater tank and a sweet baby puppy as well, but I just love natural specimens--it is just so cool to be able to reach up on your book shelf and be able to study anatomy from the real thing. 

Now, there are a myriad of methods required for preserving biological samples, many of which you can do at home with your own materials.  Cleaning a skull successfully also depends on the condition that the remains are found in.  I rarely do a skull that has a lot of tissue still on it, it’s a lot of work. I do stress though, unless you want to get into some really nasty stuff, it is not for the faint of heart (or people who are easily nauseated).  If you want any information on how to clean skulls, both from mammals and from fish, please feel free to contact me in the notes or in the asks.

That being said, as a reminder, there are some legal issues regarding many species.  Marine Mammals and endangered species are a no go, even if you find the animal already dead.  Make sure to be aware of that when you go out in the field looking for bones.  It is also is typically illegal to collect things from state and national parks in the U.S., and I don’t have all the rules for other countries, so just educate yourself before you head out.

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