I’ve finally finished the beautiful male Sparrowhawk! Which is a taxidermy commission from someone who found him after he unfortunately crashed in to a garden building, most likely mid-chase for his prey so I thought it would be nice to give him a second chance with a little prey Dunnock under his talons!
I recently got the amazing opportunity to work with a very special specimen – a male sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Unfortunately this one won’t be for sale as he is a commission from a customer that picked him up after he flew in to a greenhouse mid-chase, trying to hunt down his prey.
In most species of birds, it’s sometimes difficult to tell the gender of birds just by looking at their exterior, but with sparrowhawks it’s much easer to tell. This is because the males are considerably smaller than the female and they also have this gorgeous blue colour to their plumage, where the females are more brown in colour.
As this is a special bird, I thought it would be interesting to show you all some snippets of the taxidermy process! (As mentioned before, if you’re squeamish, this is the time to avert your eyes!)
Whilst skinning this bird, I came across something I hadn’t seen up close before, which absolutely fascinated me. I noticed his crop (A crop is a thin-walled expanded portion of the alimentary tract used for the storage of food prior to digestion) was bulging quite a lot. The curiosity got the better of me and I decided to open it up. I found a whole other bird in there! It looked a little like something from ‘Alien’. Unfortunately this bird was a bit to mangled to identify, but my guess is that it was a blue-tit, dunnock or something similar. At least we know he had good meal before he departed!
The eyes also captivated me. I use an empty surgical syringe to inject air in to the eyes to re-inflate them so I can write down measurements for correct eye placement. Look how fiery they are and think how terrifying they must look to small birds before they get eaten, eeeeeek!
After putting him back together, I processed a little dunnock to put under his very sharp talons – I like to think I gave him a second chance. This is a replication of a scene that would have been seen had he been successful in catching his prey before he tragically crashed and departed us.
All that’s left to do now is to paint around his eyes, beak and legs and it should really finish this project off nicely.
I’ll take some better photos once he’s all finished up.
Thank you for looking! If you have any questions at all about the taxidermy process, feel free to get in touch or send me a tweet over at @TaxidermyCo I will be happy to answer them 🙂
Here is the recently released press image for this years ‘Twisted Tradition’ exhibition, courtesy of Mint, which is also part of the London Design Festival 2015. It runs from the 19th-30th of September and is hosted at Mint Shop (check the poster for details). Check out Chogan the 3 eyed taxidermy crow at the top!!!
Perished Pets Taxidermy will be making an appearance at this exhibition, featuring Loki the 3 eyed crow, Niven’s Mc. Twisp the Alice in Wonderland inspired Rabbit and Jodi, the giant jackalope!
The selection for this year’s LDF has taken Mint on a cultural journey to the most poetic corners of craft-orientated design. A selection of work, inspired by organic shapes, natural materials and traditional craftsmanship, reveals how contemporary designers interpret our world.
More information about this event can be found here.
Walking around the show with Deyan Sudjic reminded me how hard it is to stand out now. It’s not enough to be simply proficient any more — there is just too much design out there.
Happy to say that Perished Pets got a feature in this weekends Financial Times newspaper following our exhibit at New Designers One Year On 2015. It’s a great honour to be featured and to be considered an “emerging young design stars to look out for”. As the article explains, there is so much amazing talent out there from amazing designers & makers around the world, it’s difficult to stand out, but I like to think that Perished Pets offers something a little different! You can read the full article online here.