HOW TO MAKE A BIRDSKIN. 29 
Keep the feathers out of the wound; cotton and the moustache movement will doit. Next you 
must sever the tail from the body, leaving a small ‘‘ pope’s-nose” for the feathers to stay stuck 
into. Put the bird in the hollow of your lightly closed left hand, tail upward, belly toward you; 
or, if too large for this, stand it on its breast on the table in similar position. Throw your 
left forefinger across the front of the tail, pressing a little backward ; take the scissors, cut the 
end of the lower bowel free first, then peck away at bone and muscle with cautious snips, till 
the tail-stump is dissevered from the rump, and the tail hangs only by skin. You will soon 
learn to do it all at one stroke; but you cannot be too careful at first ; you are cutting right 
down on to the skin over the top of the pope’s-nose, and if you divide this, the bird will part 
company with its tail altogether. Now you have the rump-stump protruding naked; the legs 
dangling on either side; the tail hanging loose over the bird’s back between them. Lay down 
scissors, take up forceps! in your left hand; with them seize and hold the stump of the rump ; 
and with point or handle of scalpel in the other hand, with finger-tips, or with thumb-nail 
(best), gently press down on and peel away skin. No cutting will be required (usually) till 
you come to the wings: the skin peels off (usually) as easily as an orange-rind; as fast as it 
is loosened, evert it; that is make it continually turn itself more and more completely inside 
out. Work thus till you are stopped by the obtruding wings. You have to sever the wing 
from the body at the shoulder, just as you did the leg at the knee, and leave it hanging by 
skin alone. Take your scissors,* as soon as the upper arm is exposed, and cut through flesh 
and bone alike at one stroke, a little below (outside of) the shoulder-joint. Do the same with 
the other wing. As soon as the wings are severed the body has been skinned to the root of 
the neck ; the process becomes very easy ; the neck almost slips out of its sheath of itself; and 
if you have properly attended to keeping the feathers out of the wound and to continual ever- 
sion of the skin, you now find you have a naked body connected dumb-bell-wise by a naked 
neck to a cap of reversed skin into which the head has disappeared, from the inside of which 
the legs and wings dangle, and around the edges of which is a row of plumage and a tail.® 
Here comes up an important consideration: the skin, plumage, legs, wings, and tail together 
weigh something, — enough to stretch ® unduly the skin of the neck, from the small cylinder of 
which they are now suspended: the whole mass must be supported. For small birds, gather 
it in the hollow of your left hand, letting the body swing over the back of your hand out of the 
1 Or at this stage you may instead stick a hook into a firm part of the rump, and hang up the bird about 
the level of your breast ; you thus have both hands free to work with. This is advisable with all birds too large 
to be readily taken in hand, and will help you, at first, with any bird. But there is really no use of it with a small 
bird, and you may as well learn the best way of working at first as afterward. 
2 The idea of the whole movement is exactly like ungloving your hand from the wrist, by turning the glove 
inside out to the very finger tips. Some people say, pull off the skin; I say never pull a bird’s skin under any cir- 
cumstances: push it off, always operating at lines of contact of skin with body, never upon areas of skins already 
detached. 
3 The elbows will get in your way before you reach the point of attack, namely, the shoulder, unless the 
wings were completely relaxed (as was essential, indeed, if you measured alar expanse correctly). Think what a 
difference it would make, were you skinning a man through a slit in the belly, whether his arms were stretched 
above his head, or pinned against his ribs. It is just the same with a bird. When properly relaxed the wings 
are readily pressed away toward the bird’s head, so that the shoulders are encountered before the elbows. 
4 Shears will be required to crash through a /arge arm-bone. Or, you may with the scalpel unjoint the 
shoulder. The joint will be found higher up and deeper among the breast muscles than you might suppose, 
unless you are used to carving fowls at table. With asmall bird, you may snap the bone with the thumb-nai! 
and tear asunder the muscles in an instant. 
5 You find that the little straight cut you made along the belly has somehow become a hole larger than the 
greatest girth of the bird; be undismayed; it is all right. 
6 If you have up to this point properly pushed off the skin instead of pulling it, there is as yet probably no 
stretching of any consequence; but, in skinning the head, which comes next, it is almost impossible for a beginner 
to avoid stretching to an extent involving great damage to the good looks of askin. Try your utmost, by delicacy 
of manipnlation at the lines of contact of skin with flesh, and only there, to prevent lengthwise stretching. Cross- 
wise distension is of no consequence; in fact more or less of it is usually required to skin the head, and it tends 
to counteract the ill effect of undue elongation. 
