#gnd091901

my second Great Northern Diver/Common Loon skull, cleaned from raw 🖤 he is complete and in much better shape than my first skull. they have very beautiful shapes!

super excited that I got this guy! he's a great northern diver and he's HUGE at 17 cm long, I thought they were guillemot sized! 😳 I got this guy off eBay, it had expired auction at least once and got relisted, and I bid the base bid so I could see when it gets outbid - and I won, somehow! really did not expect to get this guy, especcially not so cheap! ❤️ I will be giving him some TLC to get the old tissue off, as he was nature cleaned.

loon skull out of peroxide and ready for articulating! he came out quickly and at a real nice colour, and was of course an easy skuzzle. with that his TLC is all done, and my next step is to just take photos 👀

stage two of Loon TLC finished! he only took a few days and is now delightfully tissue free. he has now gone into a fairly strong peroxide solution (beak poking out, of course!) to get him as white as possible! I can't help but keep checking 👀

first step of the loon's facelift was to give him a good scrub to get the dirt off! I then also cut off as much tissue as possible, but he still definitely needed to macerate for a bit. during the rinse his lower sheath slid off, but the upper one is just a bit too stubborn so I've left it on! he was in heated macerate open-top with the beak sticking out, which I expected to cause a problem, but I didn't even notice him!