[Nhcoll-l] Scoring Moult during bird skin prep

[Elizabeth Wommack]

Hello Amos,

We generally go from no body molt, sporadic, light, moderate, heavy. I also
like to put where on the body if possible, such as sporadic molt on back of
neck and lower abdomen or heavy body molt over all feather tracts. That way
if it is a skin, and they want to look for the body molt later they know
approximately where to search.
I find a lot more sporadic molt than I ever anticipate. Some of it may be
fright molt loss or other behavior/stress molting behavior, but I also
think that may be important data for someone.

cheers,
Beth

On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 7:28 AM Amos Belmaker <belmakera at tauex.tau.ac.il>
wrote:

> Hi Beth, Thanks for the reply!
>
>
>
> You mention that you write the extent and placement of body moult. What
> kind of scale do you use for that?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Amos
>
>
>
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
> Windows 10
>
>
>
> *From: *Elizabeth Wommack <ewommack at uwyo.edu>
> *Sent: *Thursday, January 21, 2021 8:26 PM
> *To: *Amos Belmaker <belmakera at tauex.tau.ac.il>
> *Cc: *nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu; ebeac at nhm.ac.uk
> *Subject: *Re: [Nhcoll-l] Scoring Moult during bird skin prep
>
>
>
> 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/>
>
>
>


-- 
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/20210122/d4792556/attachment.html>