I found a dead pigeon on thursday on my way to school. He was just standing in the snow, with his wings half open, just as though he was about to fly away.
I called Nigel and the kids to come see it and take pictures as it was really quite something to look at, I will post pictures soon.
I also told them to bring plastic bags with them and had them take it home. It's still outside our house in a bank of snow as I had to go get everything I needed in order to do my whole taxidermy project. I went and got the borax yesterday, and now I just have to find enough time to be able to do the whole opening the bird, peeling the skin and keeping the parts that I want from it.
Mostly I want the wings and feet intact, and then I just want to grab the bones and the skull.
This will be my first dabbing into a taxidermy project and I'm very excited as I have been wanting to make a painting with bird wings attached to it for a very long time. So yeah... can't wait to see how it turns out. The whole process seems to be fairly easy for birds, although you have to make sure that the feathers are falling in the right way.
I wouldn't have picked up most dead pigeons, but this one was one of the "red" pigeons, so his feathers are quite beautiful, and he was perfectly preserved... basically just frozen in place. Plus I figure as my first project it is a common enough animal that while it would suck to destroy it, it would never be irreplaceable. Technically though, I should be doing fine as I'm not exactly focusing on taxidermy, but rather just on saving parts of the bird, which is infinitely easier to accomplish.

Yeah, I have issues.