Parrots
Alvaro Keding/© AMNH
An array of 20 bright, colorful parrot taxidermy mounts are on display in the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Collections Core in the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, highlighting the work of Curator Brian Smith in the Department of Ornithology. The parrots' colorful plumage is center stage, and the exhibit discusses he evolution of color, the ways in which color affects behavioral patterns in birds, and the importance of color for survival.
What is a bird mount?
The word taxidermy comes from the Greek taxis, meaning arrangement, and derma, meaning skin. Taxidermy, in a broad definition, is the art of creating a life-like display or study of an animal using the preserved skin and an internal armature.
Methods of taxidermy preparation are quite varied, but in the case of bird mounts, there is often an armature of wood, wire, and bone with padding material bound around it to build up the animal’s form. The skin is then placed over the armature. Padding materials can range from plant and wood fiber (i.e .excelsior) to grass, rags, and newspaper. In the deconstructed bird taxidermy mount shown below, a manikin form was made by binding stuffing material around a wire armature with string and adding further layers of stuffing to fill in the spaces between the manikin and the skin.
While not a part of the Collections Core, the x-ray ray of an owl mount shown here provides a good opportunity to see the internal armature of a taxidermy bird. Wires run up from the feet and twist through the body of the bird, wrap through the wings, and extend up the neck. Plant materials, which are not as dense and appear as light gray in the x-radiograph, fill in the body around the wire. The overlying skin (not visible in the x-radiograph) is stitched up the middle and hidden by the feathers.
It’s all about the keratin
Feathers are composed of keratin, the same protein that makes up hair, fingernails, and even turtle scutes. There are different types of feathers on a bird’s body, including but not limited to pennaceous flight feathers, downy chest feathers, and semi-plume contour feathers.
Differences in their morphology reflect their many purposes. For instance, soft downy feathers trap pockets of air near the body of the bird to maintain warmth. Trapping air with downy feathers also allows birds like ducks to float in the water! Contour feathers, on the other hand, which are layered over the bird’s torso, are stronger and can protect a bird from wind, moisture, and sun in its environment. Learn more about feathers and keratin on a related project page.
The importance of color
Parrots are often characterized by their bright and alluring plumage. The colors on parrot feathers play an essential role in their evolution and behavior. Many parrot male and female birds are equally colorful. More colorful males tend to have greater success in breeding, and more colorful females produce healthier offspring. The healthier a parrot is, the brighter its feathers.
Bright colors indicating the health and strength of a bird can be used as a warning to others to stay away, to assert dominance, or to establish territory. And while it may seem counterintuitive, the vibrant plumage can also be used as camouflage. Parrots often live in colorful rainforest habitats, and their bright feathers can easily help them hide in their vibrant environment.
How are feathers colored?
Color in feathers is primarily created in two ways: bio-pigmentation and structural color. The latter refers to the optical effect of light refracted by the microstructure of the feather. Often, color arises from a combination of the two.
The bright red, orange, and yellow in parrot feathers result from biopigments called psittacofulvins. This family of biopigments is only seen in parrots, whereas carotenoid pigments are the source of red and yellow colors in many other orders of birds.
Interestingly, research has shown that some pigments found in feathers, including psittacofulvins, may also protect them from bacterial degradation.
How were the parrot mounts conserved for display?
The parrot taxidermy mounts had varying degrees of damage. Development of appropriate treatment strategies involved collaboration between conservators working on the Collections Core exhibition project and a parallel IMLS-funded research project on the care and conservation of feathers. Some mounts required only a gentle cleaning and mechanical preening of the feathers, while others required more aggressive cleaning and repair of broken or lost talons. In addition, many of the once-bright reds, oranges, pinks, and yellows on the mounts were very faded.
Because color and its function was a main focus of this Collections Core array, it was imperative to restore faded colors so that the parrots could be appropriately showcased.
Cleaning
The first step in treating the parrots was removing the dirt and grime on the taxidermy mounts. In most cases, dirt was easily removed with gentle dry-cleaning techniques only. However, in a few cases, more stubborn grime was reduced with wet cleaning methods. Since some solvents and water can cause damage to feathers (even more so with aged feathers), all solvents were tested first and only used in selective areas.
Mechanical preening
In a few mounts, the feathers were twisted and the barbs unzipped, resulting in raised and distorted plumage. Gentle manipulation and light humidification was used to set lifted and distorted feathers back down.
Talon Repair
In some parrot mounts, breaks or losses to the talon tips were evident. Treatment involved using a stable adhesive, chosen for its reversibility and strength, with small pieces of tissue, and toning repairs with watercolor pencils.
Recoloring and feather fills
Restoring faded color in original feathers is by no means a common or universally applicable approach to their conservation. There are many reasons why this type of restoration might be inappropriate, even within science collections. However, in the context of taxidermy, the explicit intent of the specimen is to represent the lifelike appearance of the living animal. For this reason, recoloring is sometimes an appropriate method to alleviate the impact of light damage.
Feather fill mock-up.Michaela Paulson and Leslie Vilicich/© AMNH
Calyptorhynchus banksia study skin.Michaela Paulson and Leslie Vilicich/© AMNH
No single method is preferred for restoring color to faded feathers. An approach must be selected with the type of feather, its color, the function and environment of the mount in mind.
One approach is to create accurately colored replacements from cut, shaped, and toned commercial white feathers and then insert them over the faded originals. These feathers can also be used to fill in distracting losses on feathered specimens. While this method works well to recreate colorful plumage, it can be both time-consuming and challenging for certain types of feathers.
Another approach involves the direct application of colorants to faded original feathers. This method works well to efficiently recreate lost color, but is not fully reversible.
Mock-ups were created using both methods and shared in consultation with curators in the Department of Ornithology. As color plays a prominent role in the exhibit, and the parrot taxidermy is not currently used for biological or chemical analysis, direct recoloring, alongside small feather fills, was chosen.
Direct recoloring
Study skins provided by the Department of Ornithology were used to evaluate the degree of fading in each mount. If the preserved color in the mount was still within the natural range represented in the study skins, restoration was not needed. Restoration was only pursued in cases where fading had rendered the mount an inaccurate representative of the species.
To recolor original feathers, blotter paper was inserted among the parrot’s plumage, underneath the feather to be toned. A stable, conservation-grade paint system was then applied directly to the feather using a soft brush and a compatible solvent carrier. The paints were easily applied, providing bright, fresh color to the faded feathers.
Feather fills
In some cases, lost feathers exposed the underlying taxidermy skin or patches of dark downy plumage in various shades of grey and brown. Fills were made to visually reintegrate these areas.
Commercial bleached turkey feathers were cut with scissors and a small scalpel to match the shape of the original feathers. The rachis was left long and the barbs trimmed to a few millimeters so that, when inserted among the original body feathers, these short barbs catch on the adjacent feathers and are held in place mechanically. They were colored with the same conservation-grade paint system, allowed to dry, and then inserted into place.
After cleaning, mechanical preening, repairs, feather fills, and recoloring, the bright and colorful plumage of the parrots has been restored for display in the Collections Core.
