A special Taxidermy Showcase is coming to Wild Cortes on Saturday, September 14.
Cortes Currents interviewed Laurel Bohart and Donna Collins, the co-curators of Wild Cortes, in the exhibition area. The bird songs in the audio of this story are from a recording of local birds, which provides atmosphere for the displays but is unrelated to this story. Collins gave an overview of the plan for the evening, starting from the opening at 6 PM.
“Laurel is going to have a brief talk, and then we’ll have lots of time to wander through all of the bird displays and see what’s there. We’re going to showcase Laurel’s taxidermy from Africa and also some local animals not necessarily from Cortes Island that maybe nobody has ever seen before. There’s also going to be some Nigerian artwork and interesting things like a Bird of Paradise under glass.”
“Mostly they’re in very unique postures, for example, our Snowy owl with the wings completely up. This is the posture that they take just as they’re going to step off the posts, or whatever they’re on, and take flight.”
“They do come down where I lived before in southern Alberta. There were a pair living in the foothills. They were looking for food, trying to find a mate, whatever, and they will fly right down into the northern states.”
Laurel Bohart: “Snowy owls will migrate down from the north and they’ll sit in any habitat they possibly can if they can find food. That includes mice and rats.”
“This migrant is actually from Vancouver Island and comes from Fish and Wildlife back in 1990s. The bird was very emaciated, very thin. What happens quite often is if they can’t find enough food, they’ll make it as far south as they can. If they’re too weak to hunt, or can’t find the right habitat to hunt in, they don’t make it.”
Cortes Currents: Have you ever heard of one on Cortes?
Laurel Bohart: “Yes.”
Cortes Currents: “When?”
Laurel Bohart: “A number of years ago, it was just hearsay. It depends on a severe winter.”
Cortes Currents: Tell me a couple of other examples of unusual postures and why?
Donna Collins: “Laurel has a raccoon that she’s laid on a branch so that all four paws are hanging down. That’s not something you usually see, but It matches this mischievous sort of funny side that raccoons can have before you get really angry with them for raiding your garden.”
Cortes Currents: Why would it have all four paws hanging down?
Donna Collins: “Just relaxing, ‘hey, I’m just hanging out.’”
Cortes Currents: “Do we have a lot of raccoons around here?”
Donna Collins: “Of course, there’s gardens all over here. I haven’t heard them talk about being rampaged by raccoons lately, but talk to just about anybody who has a garden and they have stories of raccoons raiding their gardens. You have to have an electric fence to keep them out.”
Cortes Currents: What are the big ‘items’ people should come to look at?
Donna Collins: “She’s got five different pheasants.”
Laurel Bohart: “They came from the Courtenay area. Stan Hagen was a fancier and had all these pheasants frozen. After he passed away, his wife said, ‘I don’t want these. Do you want them?’ Yeah, so they’ve been hanging up in my house for years and years and years, but the biggest highlight is going to be the West African animals and birds. I grew up in Nigeria and my grandfather taught me how to do taxidermy when I was 13.”
Laurel Bohart: “This is a Double Spurred Francolin without spurs. Probably a female. I would have mounted this when I was about 16.”
Cortes Currents: Where does that come from?
Laurel Bohart: “Central Nigeria. The village we were living in, or on a high hill above, was called Eyali. Back then it was Kora State. I think now it’s Benin State, I’d have to check that. We were missionaries.”
Cortes Currents: Tell us something that is special.
Laurel Bohart: “A Golden oriole, not that long, brilliant gold and yellow with black highlights. It’s a very spectacular bird. Bee eaters as well, but I don’t have many of those. Sunbirds, that’s the Nigerian or African equivalent to Hummingbirds, but Hummingbirds are related to Swifts; Sunbirds are Passerines (perching birds). The similarity of visiting flowers to sip nectar is parallel evolution. Sunbirds hover, but they’re iridescent. Some of them are absolutely gorgeous. Some are iridescent purple and white. Some are hot iridescent green and because of the brightness of the sun and brilliance of the sky, they’re really hard to spot. We had a certain tree at our mission station. It had flowers and they would hover around those and pick the insects.”
“Remember, I grew up with an air rifle. That’s where most of the specimens come from and there weren’t any rules about collecting back then.”
“I’m going to bring as many Nigerian study skins as I can and probably some of the mounts and all the brighter birds. We get brilliant scarlet , hot violet and all kinds of shades. Most of them are small songbirds. Sunbirds as well as Finches and Weavers.”
“The Village weaver lives around villages. It finds lots of insects and grain but they destroy palm trees because they’re making their nests out of palm fronds. The male starts a nest. A female will show up if she likes it and they both complete it together. I can demonstrate how the female goes in and she lays her eggs. To attract her, the male simply hangs upside down, spreads its wings, flaps them madly, and makes a squeaking, ‘I love you darling,’ sound. She says, ‘well maybe you do and maybe you don’t.’ Then she decides if this is the right male for her.”
“Another bird is the African palm swift. They nest on a palm frond, but they’ll also accept coconut fronds. They glue their eggs to the frond with their saliva, because the frond is perpendicular. If they don’t do that, the eggs will fall off. But the female clings upright with her little claws. Spreads her belly feathers and sinks her body down against the eggs. So when they hatch, the youngsters have very strong little claws, talons. So they cling, and mother is able to feed them that way. They’ll hang inside a hut for sleeping, for safekeeping, which is where I collected mine – in someone’s hut.”
We were standing in front of the Cortes Island Water Cycle display throughout the interview. While it’s not part of Saturday’s showcase, it is a permanent display at Wild Cortes and people are free to examine it.
Laurel Bohart: “Each of these areas was supposed to be like a mini diorama, where you have a background. An actual diorama has a background that’s in a case. Just like you would have at the Royal BC Museum. They have really large dioramas. The one I like the best has a cougar, deer and surrounding animals from that particular habitat. We tried to do that in miniature here, but things got complicated with space.”
“You do end up having Sooty grouse up on the heights, as well as Merlins . Cowbirds are pretty much anywhere they can find a vulnerable female bird with a nest, because they happen to be parasites. This seemed to be like the best area to display them. This is a dry habitat. Turkey vultures, as you probably know, will soar anywhere above bluffs. It’s a perfect place for them because of the uprising of air. which allows them to circle higher. They hunt by odour, so the eyes are fairly small compared to the nostrils and that nose allows them to detect any whiff of decay, even the very beginnings of it. Vultures watch each other. So, in a few minutes, you have two or three of them looking for the same dead animal.”
Links of Interest:
- Click on the Wild Cortes pages at the Cortes Island Museum website
- Articles about, or mentioning, Wild Cortes
Top photo image: Golden Pheasant; All photos by Donna Collins
Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:
To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:
- Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
- Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io