Before there was Birding, there was Collecting, with a shotgun. Many people don't realize that type specimens still must be collected to be valid; even a blood sample for DNA is not considered sufficient. And skins of common birds that die are useful for education, and as beautiful as a kind of mortal art. The great bird painter Ray Harris Ching has had surreal fun showing living birds with taxonomic labels.
Blog friend Stacia Novy, falconer and biologist, has been making skins for her prof, Dr. Rick Essner, at grad school in Illinois. She writes:
"My professor has a "salvage permit" and is allowed to collect birds that have died naturally in the wild: hit by a car, starvation, disease, etc. We save the skins for study specimens. It takes 2 hours to prepare each one, so this is 40 hours worth of work, not including the drying time which takes about 2-3 weeks. They are pretty to look at, even in death."
I agree. And look, Reid: an Indigo bunting for you too see up close! Right click...
That there are still hunderds of Passenger pigeon skins in collections means that we can still find out things we don't know. And now there is plausible "Jurassic Park"scenario too-- a lot more DNA remains after 100 years than 65 million...
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