There were a lot of owl specimens on display at the museum. Primarily, I enjoyed it for the ability to compare the sizes between the species I haven’t seen in person yet.
Also, while I prefer animals to be alive, these allow me to get much closer than would typically be possible.
With that said, taxidermy seems to have come a very long way over the years.
This Great Horned Owl hunting a skunk was a beautiful twilight diarama that almost looks alive. I took about a dozen pictures of it even though they all came out the same. It was an amazing work, and again, I’d prefer my owls and skunks alive, but this was beautiful for preserved specimens.
Here’s just the owl itself:
While this display scores a 10/10, others were a bit less accurate to what I hope they looked like when they were alive. Let’s review the others and see how others have done in their attempts to preserve these animals.
Note: Didn’t realize just how many there were here until now! My fingers are tired! 😵💫
Inuktitut word for Snowy Owl.
Contains no owl and is cute, so 10/10!
Check out that Wikipedia link for the history. It’s only a few decades old, but has an interesting history.
I honestly thought I was looking at one of the ‘less accurate’ attempts at taxidermy while scrolling… 🤣
After some of them, I wouldn’t blame you!
It was the last thing I saw walking through the museum and as I walked up I kept thinking to myself “please don’t be real!”
Now, as something fake, I think it is quite cute. Strange how that works…
Totally cute, definitely!
Snowy Owl 2
3/10
This owl looks to have been stuffed with a Mr Peanut figure. I disapprove…
Mr Peanut 😂 I’m dying
I let my girlfriend scroll the post to see if she agreed with my rankings. She got to this one and thought it was a good one until she saw my review. I guess I understand why she likes me, her attractiveness meter calibration is off! 🤣
I think people just love the Snowy in any shape or form lol. Not that I can blame them
You may be right. This one to me is more “O NO!” than it is “O RLY?” 😄
Pair of Screechies 7/10
Pretty good work on both. Red morph looks good and is pretty close to an 8, but grey morph looks a bit too much like Yoda, so I gotta take a point off.
Saw Whet 2/10
The only thing in this guy’s favor is I can tell what species it is. The body looks fine, but the head looks like something has happened to this guy in transport over the years or something. I feel bad for this one.
Great Horned Owl 3
7.9/10
A lot of good stuff going on here, and I really want to love this one, but the face seems to have an unnatural expression.
Tawny Owl 8/10
You can see Owl from Winnie the Pooh below him. This was in a special display of storybook animals and the real animals they are based on. Was happy to get to see a Tawny at all since we don’t have them in North American. Pretty good job on this one as well. Eyes a little lifeless, but they are black after all. Pretty good job on shape and great plumage.
Long Eared Owl 8/10
Would have preferred a mystical or quizzical look to angry, and LEOs are one of my favorites, but did job on this one as it is. As the only Long Ear they had, at least it didn’t make me sad like some of the others did.
Great Grey Owl
No Score
I’ve never seen one of these in person before. I just checked out a few pics online to compare this specimen to, and this still looks like an Great Grey head on a Barred Owl body to me. I don’t feel I can fairly judge this one.
Saw Whet 2
5/10
Great improvement over the other, but still pretty rough. Must be harder to work on something so small. Still far from good.
Barred Owl 7/10
Bottom of the good range. It’s alright. The head shape looks a little off, but still better than a lot of the others. You can tell someone tried, but it looks like good amateur work. Still not very alive looking, but good for a specimen.
Barn Owl 8/10
Definitely in the decent range here. Nice specimen to begin with, and solid work on the preservation. Not quite as alive as the Shortie, but still good. This one is a successful job, but it isn’t perfect.
Eastern Screech Owl 6/10
It’s not great, but it’s not going to be on any worst of lists. You can tell what it is, and it won’t give you nightmares, but that’s about all I can say for this one.
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Barred Owl 2
6.5/10
A little big on the head here… Body done fine though.
Pair of Snowy Owls
5/10
I forget if these were in the Inuit exhibit or what, but these just look like birds they found laying around. They’re accurate as far as that, but there isn’t much more to say.
Short Eared Owl 9/10
I was excited to see they had a Shortie! This one was done with care, and while not as good as the GHO, it was really nice. I saw this one before I saw the GHO and thought this was as good as it was going to get.
![Huge Post: Owls Displays from the Carnegie Natural History Museum, some great, some not so much... [Content warning: not live owls]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/97e2e9c6-6e9a-4720-b152-7cf92f244a9b.jpeg){kind=link}