MAKING BIRDSKINS 
17 
not too large, fold in the edges of the cornucopia and place the specimen 
in your bag or basket. In the case of very large specimens — Hawks, 
Owls, etc. — it is advisable to skin out the body in the field, when they 
can be packed in much smaller space. 
Making Birdskins . — With proper instruction it is not difficult to 
learn to skin birds. I have known beginners, who had closely watched 
experts at work, make fair skins at their first attempt — better skins, 
indeed, than the person who learns only from written directions may 
ever make. I am speaking from experience. Only too clearly do I 
remember my own first attempts at skinning birds and their hopelessly 
wretched results. In despair I at last sought the assistance of a distant 
ornithological friend. In one lesson he made the process so clear to me 
that I was at once enabled to make skins twice as quickly and twice as 
well. However, we unfortunately are not all blessed with ornithological 
friends to whom we can turn for advice, and I therefore append the 
following directions for making birdskins: 
Let us begin with a bird, say, the size of a Robin: 1. Plug the bird’s 
throat and nostrils tightly with fresh cotton. If the eyeball is ruptured, 
pull it out with the forceps and fill the cavity with meal. 2. Lay the 
bird before you on its back, its bill pointing to the left; place your open 
left hand lengthwise on it, so that the base of your first and second fingers 
rests on the middle of the breastbone; use these fingers and the handle 
of the scalpel to separate the feathers from near the end of the breast- 
bone to the vent, and when the parting is made use the same fingers 
to hold the feathers aside. 3. With the scalpel make an incision in 
the skin from just in front of the end of the breastbone, or at the base 
of the V. formed by the spread fingers, to the vent, being careful not to 
cut through into the abdomen. 4. Sprinkle a pinch of meal along the 
cut. 5. Lift the skin at the front end of the cut and insert the end of 
the scalpel handle between it and the breastbone. If you try to do this 
lower down on the cut, over the belly, you will find it difficult to separate 
the skin on which the feathers grow from the immediately underlying 
skin which covers the abdomen. Separate the skin from the body the 
whole length of the cut and as far down toward the backbone as possible, 
thus exposing the bare knee. 6. Take hold of the foot and push the 
knee farther up into view, then take the blunt-ended scissors and, on 
the inside of the skin, clip the leg entirely in two. 7. Repeat opera- 
tions 5 and 6 on the other side of the body. 8. Press away the skin as 
much as possible on either side of the rump, and place the thumb 
at the left side (left, seen from above) of the base of the tail or ‘pope’s 
nose,’ with the first finger on the other side (both inside the skin) and 
the second finger behind (above) on the rump; now with the blunt 
scissors cut through the flesh between the thumb and first finger toward 
the second finger, which serves the purpose of a guard to prevent you 
from cutting through the skin. 9. Stand the bird on its breastbone, 
the belly toward you, and with both thumbs press the tail and skin 
of the rump over and down off the stump from which you have just 
