100 
The writer has seen and tried out several methods of “making skins” 
in the field, and for many years followed a rather common method with 
small birds. Put a wad of clean cotton in each orbit either before or after 
turning back the head skin. Wrap enough cotton around a stiff, slender 
stick to fill neck and part of body and thrust the end into the back of the 
skull (Figure 36). Shove a flat bunch of cotton up along the front of the 
breast into the throat, and put a little bunch into the mouth to fill up under 
the chin. Wrap the legs and put a little cotton into the abdomen and around 
the base of the tail, and close the skin with a few stitches. Wrap the sldn 
in cotton or cheesecloth to dry. In the case of smaller birds this method 
will make a satisfactory skin if properly manipulated, and a good part 
of the success depends upon proper laying out and wrapping. As a matter 
of faet, a light and artistic touch will often make a consistently good skin 
by an inferior or antiquated method. Our hope is to develop a method 
win a cotton on blender 
po/nted st/cH.-sfart/ng 
w///j necH.ro approximate 
•Ssre o/body tnrbe /test? 
Figure 35. Making artificial body for bird skin. 
which if followed carefully will give good average results from the start, 
and Major Allan Brooks in 1929 demonstrated a method for the writer 
which is substantially the same as Chapin’s (1929) method, with some 
variations that seem to be improvements. 
Brooks' Method of Filling Bird Skins 
Wrap cotton lightly around the bones of each leg to form an artificial 
leg. Roll the neck skin back so that the base of the skull is exposed. On 
the tip of fine-pointed forceps roll a bunch of fine white cotton into a hard, 
smooth ball the size of the eye-cavity. Holding it in the forceps, thrust it 
up through the neck and through the back of the skull into the orbit. A 
similar ball of cotton is placed in the other orbit, and both are anchored 
