Thanks to early Museum Research Apprenticeship program (MRAP) student and world-class volunteer Barbara Logan, we kept up our weekly “skinning night” throughout the summer. And so it was with a considerable head of steam that we rolled on into the fall semester, adding five MRAP students to the fun. Preparing bird specimens and studying the morphology, anatomy, and other amazing attributes of birds is wonderfully stimulating. With MRAP students and volunteers, we’re preserving the birds of the present for the scientific research and education of the future. And we’re having a lot of fun in the process! If birds aren’t the most exciting things to study in the world, we missed the memo.

Brandi Ringgenberg prepares a Black-footed Albatross specimen