Discovered: 25/09/2016
Method: Mixed
Recovered: 21/03/2017
Method: Mixed
Recovered: 21/03/2017
I found this out for a walk with a friend. I was surprised to find that in a cat-filled area it still had it's head! I froze it as soon as I got home because I knew I wouldn't be able to process it for a day or two.
I decided that I don't need the whole skeleton of the pigeon, I decided I only wanted to process the head and feet.
The feet I removed with a pair of scissors, I didn't find this too difficult as I had removed the feet of the Crow so I knew what that felt like.
I was a bit worried about how to remove the head, so first I tried to move the head into a good angle for removing. Because the bird was still frozen, me twisting the neck to move the head resulted in the head coming straight off in my hands, so I didn;t have to worry about working out how to remove it.
The head I put in a tupperware tub in the garden so that insects can reduce it to bones. I decided I would like to keep the feet with flesh on, so I tried a technique I'd read about online. This involved putting the feet in a cardboard box and covering them in maize-meal, then leaving it in a cool dry place for several months. This dries out the flesh and leaves you with mummified feet.
I decided that I don't need the whole skeleton of the pigeon, I decided I only wanted to process the head and feet.
The feet I removed with a pair of scissors, I didn't find this too difficult as I had removed the feet of the Crow so I knew what that felt like.
I was a bit worried about how to remove the head, so first I tried to move the head into a good angle for removing. Because the bird was still frozen, me twisting the neck to move the head resulted in the head coming straight off in my hands, so I didn;t have to worry about working out how to remove it.
The head I put in a tupperware tub in the garden so that insects can reduce it to bones. I decided I would like to keep the feet with flesh on, so I tried a technique I'd read about online. This involved putting the feet in a cardboard box and covering them in maize-meal, then leaving it in a cool dry place for several months. This dries out the flesh and leaves you with mummified feet.
I recovered the feet in march 2017, but have been unable to recover the head. In the last few months our landlord has been making several changes to our garden, and I suspect several tubs that I have left in the garden to decompose have been thrown out.