UM BIRDS.

A word of advice to the beginner as to the variety of specimen to use in
first trials. Don't begin on too small a bird until somewhat adept;
unpracticed fingers bungle sadly over tiny feathered bodies. A first
subject should be at least as large as a bob white to give room to work,
and of some variety in which the feathers are firmly embedded.

Snow birds, cardinals, and some others have very thin delicate skins,
the pigeons shed their feathers on little or no provocation. Blackbirds
and jays are very good to practice on but the very best would be a coot,
sometimes called crow duck or mudhen. It is of fair size, closely
covered with feathers which will fall in place readily after skinning
and wiring even at the hands of a beginner.

Many, in fact most, birds have numerous bare patches which the adjacent
feathered tracts cover perfectly while in the flesh, but which a too
generous filling will exhibit in all their nakedness. I had not
discovered this until some of my first attempts at mounting birds
nonplussed me by showing numerous patches of bare skin in spite of the
fact that but a few feathers had become loosened in the handling.

We will assume that a suitable specimen is at hand, freshly killed and
properly skinned as per the directions already given. All bones
remaining with the skin, lower leg, wing, skull, etc., have been
stripped of flesh and any shreds remaining poisoned, as has the entire
inner surface of skin. With the skinned body at hand cut three wires of
suitable size, one a little more than twice the length of the body and
neck, for the body wire, the other two about twice the length of the
legs may be a size larger as it is important that the leg wires furnish
adequate support.

[Illustration: CLINCHING LEG WIRES IN ARTIFICIAL BODY OF BIRD]

Form the body wire into a loop which is the outline of the body laid on
one side with the surplus end projecting along the line of the neck.
This loop should not be quite as large as the body, however, to allow
for a thin layer of filling material over it. Wad up a handful of coarse
tow, push it inside the body loop and wind with coarse thread, drawing
in by pressure and winding and building out with flakes of tow to a
rough shape of the skinned body. The neck also is built up the same way,
making it fully as thick as the original but no longer ever.

[Illustration: WIRE LOOP FOR BIRD BODY.]

If the wire projects more than a couple of inches fr