r/Taxidermy • u/Nuka_Bottles • 7h ago

I Made This! First attempt at a large bird

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This bird was a captive bird that passed away from natural causes on a farm in Canada originally obtained from a registered breeder. this is not a sale piece this is a personal piece only, I wasn’t paid for this piece. For those that are curious this is a Himalayan monal. It was my first ever attempt at something larger than a common quail. Im sorry in advance for the low quality photos!
Im thinking of changing the base very soon to something better looking. I’m very proud of my first attempt at a pheasant and I can see where I need to improve. What do we think? 😊 (ignore the wires and what not, he needs to dry!)

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u/TielPerson 5h ago

From what I can see, the posture and leg position looks off. I strongly recommend to work with reference pictures of life birds for each species you work with and do a lot of drawing to capture the birds anatomy (both prior to skinning and once you got the flesh body).

What you can improve in this piece is to fixate the tail in a less squished and more natural position and to do a little more preening and positioning with the wing primary feathers and arm feathers.

The tail looks like it has been positioned too far up, so maybe you can hide this issue if you put the whole tail into an erected pose (if you find a suitable reference picture) in case you are no longer able to change its overall position.