[CHAPTER VI.]
COLLECTING SKINS OF SMALL BIRDS.
The lives of hundreds of thousands of wild birds have been sacrificed to no purpose by persons claiming to be ornithological collectors, and yet who had not the knowledge, skill, or industry to make up good bird skins. There are now in this country numerous large collections of bird skins that are a sight to behold. The ability to make up fine, clean, shapely, well-preserved skins, and make them rapidly also, is a prime requisite in anyone who aspires to be sent off to interesting "foreign parts" to shoot, collect, and see the world—at the expense of someone else. An aspiring young friend of the writer, whose soul yearned to travel and "collect," missed a fine opportunity to make a very interesting voyage on the Albatross, for the sole reason that with all his yearning he could not make good bird skins,—and it served him right for his lack of enterprise.
Let me tell you that, while twenty years ago any sort of a bird skin was acceptable to a museum, now such specimens must be first class in order to be well received. Fine skins are the rule now with curators and professional ornithologists, and poor ones the exception. Although the work itself is simple enough, it is no child's play to perform it successfully.
It is best for the beginner to learn first how to skin small birds, and make up their skins, and when he has mastered these details he is prepared to undertake the preparation of large specimens, and learn how to overcome the exceptional difficulties they present. To this end the present chapter will be devoted to setting forth the leading principles involved, which are most easily learned from small specimens.
We will first undertake the work of skinning a small bird—a robin, thrush, or blackbird, whichever you happen to have. If in skinning, skin-making, and mounting you master the robin, for example, which is the highest type of a bird, you will be well prepared for the great majority of the other members of the feathered tribe.
Shoot your specimen with as fine shot as possible, and not too much even of that, in order to avoid shooting its mandibles, feet, legs, and feathers to pieces. As soon as it is dead, plug the throat, nostrils, and all wounds that bleed, with bits of cotton, to keep the blood and other liquids from oozing out upon the feathers, and putting you to more serious trouble. Carry the specimen home in any careful way you choose, so as to avoid rumpling or soiling the plumage. By all means let your first practice be upon clean birds.
[a]Fig. 10.]—Names of the External Parts of a Bird.[5] 1, Crown; 2, forehead; 3, nostrils (or cere); 4, upper mandible; 5, lower mandible; 6, throat; 7, neck; 8, spurious quills; 9, occiput; 10, ear; 11, nape; 12, breast; 13, middle coverts; 14, large coverts; 15, belly; 16, tibia; 17, tarsus; 18, inner toe; 19, middle toe; 20, outer toe; 21, thumb; 22, under-tail coverts; 23, tail; 24, primaries; 25, secondaries; 26, tertiaries.
A bird should lie an hour or two after being shot, in order that the blood may coagulate. Warm specimens bleed very badly in skinning.