Bird Skinning at the Field Museum - Step by Step

I've been working in the birds division of the field museum for several months now. My job is to skin the dead birds that are brought in by citizens or collected by volunteers around the city of Chicago. When the birds first come in they look like this:

The birds are kept in a freezer prior to their skinning, and the process can begin as soon as the neck is fully mobile.  The feathers on the breast are parted down the middle and the skin in slit from the throat to the end of the ribcage.  The spinal chord, trachea and esophagus are severed in the neck and the skin is peeled back from the torso.

The wings are clipped at the elbows and the legs below the hips, allowing the torso to be removed.  The skin of the neck is pulled up over the head and the skull is opened in order to remove the brain stem, brain, eyeballs, and tongue.  The neck skin is then eased back over the head.  With the removal of the contents of the skull, the torso, and the muscled of the appendages, the bird is ready to be stuffed.  

Unlike traditional taxidermy, when stuffing the bird skin for the museum's archive, there in no intention of imitating a lifelike pose.  The birds are stuffed with cotton, with a small stick running from the skull down the back of the skin to act as a structural spine.  The eye sockets and throat are stuffed with small pieces of cotton. The wing bones are tied with string to approximately the distance of the shoulder blades.  A wad of cotton the size of the torso is sewn into the body of the bird, and the feet are tied together at the ankles.  The bird is posed to be dried on its back with its wings folded beneath - essentially the most efficient pose for storage.  They are then dried and filed in the archive, and a corresponding flesh sample is kept in the freezer so that scientists interested in the bird in the future will have access to it.

Not all of the birds brought in to the Field Museum are archived as skins.  Many - especially those in poor condition - are preserved as skeletons, which are cleaned by flesh eating beetles in the beetle room.  For a video of the beetle room, click here.