Cleaning bird skulls ?

[Mossypaw]

One of my boys has a fascination, and a bedroom full of, animal skulls and associated body parts. Bigger stuff and animals are easy enough to clean, but smaller birds are a bit tricky/fragile. He usually just buries them in light dry ground and let’s nature/time do it’s thing.
Any suggestions of other, quicker ways to clean up the skulls that will keep the colour in the beaks ?

 

[deerstalker.308]

Did this loads as a kid, currently have a goshawk I found last week I need to do although nature did most of the work.
I always even as a young child had a little gas stove and gently boiled and picked them clean, the smallest and most fiddly I did were gold and fire crest, along with a pipistrel bat (long before I knew anything about the legalities of such things!!) Blue tits and long tailed tits were difficult but achievable with concentration, the bill sheath falls off during cooking and can be kept and replaced on the skull before drying so it shrinks back onto it.

 

[deerstalker.308]

Firecrest

Blue tit

 

[deerstalker.308]

Why not buy him a set of basic dissection tools, fine tweezers, pointy things, scalpels (supervision may be required?), be careful with peroxide on such small things, the bone is easily damaged, I used to use it but very sparingly and always washed it off afterwards.

 

[Mungo]

Firecrest View attachment 193619

Blue tit
View attachment 193620View attachment 193621

Wow.

Very impressive.

 

[Cootmeurer]

Get him started with a small colony of dermestid beetles. I used to keep three tanks of them specifically for small and fine skulls. However, beware as the adult beetles will eat the fine bones on petite skulls (like bats and shrews and such). I used to use a puffer to remove all adults from one tank and kept only juveniles/larval ones

 

[badger1985]

I've only had experience with mumified/long time dead ones (all found washed up on the riverbank and beach). I just went for soaking them in some warm water and biological washing powder. I them had to sieve the debris to get all of the necessary pieces to put back together. A short soak in some 9% hydrogen peroxide before reassembly with a glue gun and they came out quite well.

 

[deerstalker.308]

I've only had experience with mumified/long time dead ones (all found washed up on the riverbank and beach). I just went for soaking them in some warm water and biological washing powder. I them had to sieve the debris to get all of the necessary pieces to put back together. A short soak in some 9% hydrogen peroxide before reassembly with a glue gun and they came out quite well.

Is the one with the dark sheath an egret? Trying to work out what it is?

 

[badger1985]

I've always assumed so but I don"t know for sure as I didn't find it. Could be some other unknown wader. Came from the north cornish coast and I k ow they have cattle regrets up there. Kept it with the fish eaters because it seemed to the inner ten year old to be best placed there.

 

[Hayduke]

How about putting it in a jar with a handful of maggots from the tackle shop?

 

[243 Stalker]

Hayduke,

Maggots from a tackle shop have finished feeding and have as they say come off the meat, so would not help in cleaning a skull.

ATB 243 Stalker.

 

[StephenToast]

Firecrest View attachment 193619

Blue tit
View attachment 193620View attachment 193621

That's seriously cool.