Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum

Calypte anna

I love the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum, and not least of all my coworkers for their enthusiasm and creativity.  Sam beat me to the lab this morning and was starting to skin this beautiful Anna’s hummingbird.  We marveled for a while about the seeming convergent evolution between hummingbirds and insects — aren’t hummingbirds essentially avian insects?  Their purpose is mostly to pollinate flowers, making them some type of feathered bumble bee.  

It was a joy to watch him through this process and the end result turned out to be fantastically modeled.  Emily K. joked that we should call him “Sam Tweezerhands” because he needed to go gloveless and use two sets of tweezers to pull apart the delicate skin.  He was initially intending to prepare it as a study skin, but the hummingbird had its own ideas about how it wanted to be posed, so he secured it as a mini live mount instead.  The expression on his face holding up the final product says it all!  A job very well done, and major kudos to Sam for his willingness to tackle the most challenging specimens in the freezer with an honest passion for the craft.