I didn't collect any of these, but I thought they were interesting. They were roosting in a friend's shed.
Discovered: 25/09/2016 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 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. Discovered: 12/04/2015 Method of Preparation: Burial in garden Recovered: 08/12/2015 I was preparing to start my journey in collecting roadkill, and I reached the point where all I needed was a shovel for burying bodies in the garden. On my way home from buying a shovel, I happened to walk past a dead crow. I initially thought it was a back bin liner, but decided it was worth a second look. I keep bags on me for opportunities such as these, so I was able to collect the bird corpse without touching it. I took the bird home to bury in my garden.
I left the crow buried in the garden for about a month. When I went to dig it up I learnt that this was definitely not long enough. I'll spare you most of the details, but I'll just say that it certainly smelt like a half-rotten bird corpse. At this stage I transferred the head of the bird to a plastic container with holes cut into it, and placed it at the end of my garden. The idea being that insects will devour any organic tissue, leaving a clean skull for me. The rest of the bird, I returned to it's grave. After being in the Tupperware box for a few weeks, I realised that the insects were not interested in eating tissue that had already been buried, so I moved the skull to a bucket to soak in soapy water, to see if that would help clean the bones. It did not, so I tried boiling the skull. This, also, did not work. So the skull was re-buried. I then recovered the skull a few months later. And a size comparison with the sparrow skull: And here is it on display next to my cat skull:
Recovered: 12/06/2015 (kept frozen until 07/08/2015) Method of Preparation: Tupperware box Recovered: 01/09/15 Displayed from: 07/09/15 An item recovered for me by my parents, which meant that they had to keep it frozen until a time when I could collect it from them. Left to soak in soapy water, with the shrew remains, after recovery. Because it was left with the shrew remains, I am not sure that all the bones recovered as Sparrow are really sparrow, some of them may be shrew. I've chosen to display the skull and the vertebrae separately from the rest of the sparrow bones
Date found: Unknown (frozen until 07/08/2015) Method: Tupperware box Recovered: 01/09/15 Displayed from: 07/09/15 This bird was killed by my parent's cat. I believe it to be a House Martin. Whilst recovering the bones I noticed a very specific smell. It wasn't particularly bad (as with digging up the crow too early), and I recognised it. I eventually realised that I last encountered it when visiting a falconry centre. So it must be a specific bird smell. After recovery the bones were left to soak in soapy water for a few days. After being soaked in soapy water for a few days the bones were soaked in a bleach/water mix for about an hour. As you can tell, most of the bones come in pairs. The skull (middle row, far right) didn't survive very well, it seemed to be the most fragile bone. The bone on the bottom far right I believe to be the lower jaw. I originally thought it to be a rib, but there was only one. It seems to be roughly the shape of the bird's lower jaw, as this bird had quite a rounded beak. In the middle you can see a few vertebrae. Here are some more pictures: I've chosen to keep the bones in a clear plastic box for display.
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AuthorI live in the UK, and enjoy decorating my home with bones from naturally deceased animals. Archives
July 2018
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