Preserving My First Wet Specimen & 10 Year Comparison

Описание: It's like a transformation video but nothing changes! Please excuse my shaky camera work in the first half of the video - I wasn't the best cameraman in 2011, haha
About this bird 👇🏻
Fawn (whom, I can't remember why I named her that at the time, I think I just liked how the word sounded!) is a white-plumed honeyeater, native to Australia. I found her dead one day when I was on my walk home from school. She was discovered in some foliage next to the road but her neck wasn't broken and she didn't seem to have any wounds or other injuries, so I'm unsure exactly how she died. She was very fresh when I found her and because I had never preserved any animals before (but had been wanting to for quite a while), I kept her in my mum's freezer (with permission, lol) until I could find a well-suited jar for her size and the right preservation fluid. Usually I would recommend preserving animals with isopropyl alcohol that's 70% or above. Or even better, to fix the animal with formalin. However, I don't have easy, affordable access to either of these in my country, so I ended up using (and still do) methylated spirits. I was under the impression when I first preserved Fawn that metho would only keep animals preserved for around 10 years, but a decade has passed and Fawn is still looking pretty good!

As mentioned in the video, Fawn's eyes disappeared shortly after preserving her (I would say within about 3 hours or less) - again, I believe this is due to how long I kept her in the freezer for, combined with the metho being dehydrating. I've only had this problem about 2 or 3 times out of the 60+ times that I've preserved wet specimens.

I'm aware that it's always best to inject the specimen with preservation fluid and to also get some into their stomachs for better results, but this video being my first time, I didn't do that.

Anyway, that's Fawn c: She's so precious to me, as she's the little bird that started it all and I'll always be so grateful to her for that 💚 I hope she'll still be around to bless me with her quiet presence in another 10 years!

Links:
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Instagram 2:   / corvinsometimes  
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheRavensHour

#Oddities #VultureCulture #WetSpecimen

Music: 'Winter's Bloom' by Adrian Von Ziegler