[Nhcoll-l] Scoring Moult during bird skin prep

[Elizabeth Wommack]

Hello Amos,

At a minimum I think recording the presence of molt is important. Many
banding stations have different methods for how they record molt, often
because they work on different groups of birds. So at least sharing the
data that a bird has molt will tell people they should come look at the
skin.
If you do skeletons then molt records may become more important, as the
feathers will become separated (and possibly thrown away) from the
preserved skeleton.

At the UWYMV we record which flight feathers are missing or actively
growing in, and the extent and placement of body molt.
If a preparator is an expert in a group of birds then I also leave it open
that their molt notes can be more extensive. I specialize in birds of prey,
so I tend to take a lot of notes for those birds (similar to how I would if
I was banding), but tend to do the less intense records for most other
groups of birds.

cheers,
Beth Wommack

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 1:25 AM Amos Belmaker <belmakera at tauex.tau.ac.il>
wrote:

> ◆ This message was sent from a non-UWYO address. Please exercise caution
> when clicking links or opening attachments from external sources.
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I’ve been wandering what are some of the common practices regarding
> scoring moult during the preparation of bird specimens. It is possible to
> be very extensive and score each flight feather individually (as is done in
> Israeli banding stations) but this is very hard to digitize later. On the
> other hand, creating a scale would ignore potentially important information.
>
>
>
> What are the different strategies you use in this regard?
>
>
>
> Stay safe!
>
> Amos
>
>
>
> *Dr. Amos Belmaker*
>
> Collection Manager of Birds, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History
>
> Tel Aviv University, Israel
>
> belmakera at tauex.tau.ac.il, (+972) 073-3802007
>
>
>


-- 
Elizabeth Wommack, PhD
Curator and Collections Manager of Vertebrates
University of Wyoming Museum of Vertebrates
Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center
University of Wyoming,
Laramie, WY 82071
ewommack@ <ewommack at berkeley.edu>uwyo.edu
www.uwymv. <http://www.uwymv.edu/>org
UWYMV Collection Use Policy
<http://www.uwymv.org/index.php/download_file/view/43/143/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20210121/02f9014b/attachment.html>