Hi Peter,
I rescue wildlife and get the odd call to pick up an Owl and sometimes find them myself on the road. There are a few things we usually do with the bodies. If in good condition we ask the museum or DECC if they would like it. If a threatened species we also notify DECC for their records. DECC will take some animals to have them taxidermied for their educational displays. We wrap and freeze as mentioned by others.
Another area we use dead specimen’s is at our training courses. WIRES and other licensed wildlife organisations may be interested if you give them a call. The bodies of Owls are used at our Raptor training courses for ID and other workshops. The feathers of dead animals are sometimes used for Imping (a feather repair/replacement technique) in rehab birds. This is done to speed up recovery time and assists with an earlier release. I have not done one of these courses for a few years so I am not certain Imping is still carried out.
The other use of course is as a food source for larger raptors or other animals who may feed on carrion.
Regards
Carla Jackett
To:
” birding-aus@vicnet.net.au” < birding-aus@vicnet.net.au>
Subject:
What to do with a dead owl?
From:
Peter Shute < pshute@nuw.org.au>
Date:
Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:18:18 +1000
This morning I found a dead Southern Boobook in Altona, presumably hit by a train during the night. I didn’t have time to do anything about it, as I was on the way to the station, so I hid it in the bushes. What should I do if it’s still there tonight? Should things like this be sent to a museum, or does that only apply to rarer species?
Peter Shute==============================
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
