BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Students flock to taxidermy club
A great horned owl with its wings outstretched as if ready for take off is the pride of a University of Windsor club filled with bird lovers and biologists.
The owl’s ear-like tufts are set back, its feathers are slightly ruffled and its eyes are spooky white.
They should be yellow but the Avian Taxidermy Club doesn’t have the money to buy glass eyes.
What they do have is a freezer full of birds, some that date back decades, waiting to be prepared — they don’t like to call it stuffed — and more than a dozen members learning the tricks of taxidermy.
“I’ve always loved birds,” club president and biology student Grace Bastien said. “When do you have the opportunity to see so many types of birds? I know they’re all not alive but I think it’s for a good cause. You get to learn about them.”
They don’t catch them or kill them. Windows, cats and cars take care of that and the dead birds are given to the club, which has a permit to study them. Most are prepared and dried without chemicals as museum-like study skins where the birds are lying beak up with their wings flat against their body.
The club is only in its second year. They have large birds such as a juvenile great blue heron, and small birds, including a ruby throated hummingbird. Bastien prepared a black-throated blue warbler with its beak open as if singing.
“We don’t want to get any cool birds in here because it means they died,” said Bastien, who wants to become an ornithologist. “It’s always a sad thing, like, ‘Oh man. We lost an owl.’ ”
The great horned owl, dubbed Harriet, was found dead at Holiday Beach during the winter and in a bit of an avian autopsy the club determined the owl likely died of starvation. At least seven students worked on the owl over a month — 10 hours in total — to prepare and pose it.
The brain and guts are removed so the bird can be stuffed with cotton and sewn back up. Some of the prepared birds are posed for display and some are kept for studying. Students pin down the birds kept for studying so the feathers don’t unfold as the skin dries out.
“They’re essentially mummies,” said Gillian Hughes, a fourth-year student in behaviour, cognition and neuroscience who likes the artistry of taxidermy and seeing the birds up close.
Students join to improve their bird identification skills and learn about anatomy. The Avian Taxidermy Club had an artist last year who wanted to draw the birds, and the club is pitched as useful for wouldbe wildlife biologists, researchers, veterinarians or surgeons, and to boost a resume.
Jason Chappus, a fourth-year biology student from LaSalle, said it would be valuable, especially if applying to a museum. Chappus said opening up the bird and doing a bit of a bird autopsy or necropsy can have a CSI feel to it as students try to figure out why the birds died.
Usually, because the birds are small, they don’t smell, but students don’t know that until the bird thaws and they cut it open. Chappus said he was helping an ornithology class a few weeks ago where a pigeon and its crop full of food was a bit ripe. “It was probably the worst smelling bird I ever had.”
Sometimes the students only prepare the wings for the display case, like the Baltimore oriole that had maggots. Many of the students have done dissections and are not squeamish about it, although the thought of removing bird guts doesn’t always sell the club when members show off some of the 80 specimens and try to interest other students.
Bastien, of Tecumseh, has no plans to use her taxidermy skills beyond the birds she loves.
“I’ve heard mammals are stinky,” she said.