We managed to find a bunch of these little guys last weekend and I just prepared a skin for tying feathers. Prior to skinning and cleaning up this bird was chosen as one not worth mounting due to blood stains and such. It takes me about 15 minutes to skin and another 15 to wash them. I can wash a number at a time to reduce the total time.

At that point I either blow dry on high which takes quite a while with a duck that is so dense with down... they are super sponges! In the old days when I was doing tons of them I ran a tumbler half-full of sawdust and borax to both dry and fluff them. My tumbler was large enough to do a dozen or so mallards at a time... But I have not done them in quite a long time.

Also, USFWS has decided in all their infinite wisdom that the law allowing waterfowl feathers to be sold for fly tying does not include feathers still on skin... Which destroys the very best filing system going.

Here is one of the birds while we were still out on the water:


Here is the prepared skin drying:


Closeup of the head... each color change is drawn across every feather in the change zone as a hard line:


The flanks and shoulders... love that cinnamon flank for dry fly wings!


Another shot to show how large the flanks are:


And finally, the speculum feathers:


Another neat thing about these birds is the way they react to UV light... They glow very purple under blacklight.
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