Taxidermy 1.6

Welcome back! I am very excited to say that the quail is mounted and in a flying position. There were a few minor details that I did not mention in my last blog that all came together to make the finishing product. As I have said before the bones on these birds are very frail, to give the head some more strength I filled it in with molding clay all the way into the eye sockets. The clay in the eye sockets are what kept the glass eyes in place.

As you can see in the picture, the wires that I placed in the wings and legs allowed me to shape the bird into a flying position. Once the bird was in the position that I wanted I taped down the wings to keep the feathers aligned. Then I had to start a more tedious part of this project, after I had used the hair dryer to fluff up the feathers they got all out of line so I had to use a small metal hook to lay down all of the feathers back to their more natural looking positions. This took me a long time because of the layers upon layers of feathers that these quail have.

Overall, I am not very happy with the end product, the skin dried out too quickly causing it to shrink and not fit the form they way it should have. My stitching job on the stomach was not the greatest, and the wing that was previously broken was beyond fixing and you can tell in the picture that it is not positioned the way it is supposed to be. My next task is to make a sort of habitat, or I might just make a wall hanging attachment instead, haven't decided yet.