Bird skinning at Cincinnati Museum Center

Bailey McKay (right) Mason Milam (left)

Bailey McKay from the University of Minnesota visited Cincinnati this weekend to help us with some bird skinning work. Today we had a very successful skinning seminar attended by Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) staff and volunteers and graduate students from the University of Kentucky. We prepared seven specimens today and another five specimens over the weekend, everything from blue-gray gnatcatchers to blue grosbeaks to northern parulas, we even prepared a little penguin generously donated to the museum from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. Skinning seminars will be a regular occurrence at the CMC Geier Center from now on and hopefully Bailey will be back to give us more tips and tricks on turning birds into museum quality specimens. More on the experience with that pesky penguin in the next post...