A Toucan Decoy - Part II

In the last issue, I demonstrated how I started carving this toucan decoy, which I planned to use to draw the birds closer for photography. Although I intended this carving as a decoy, I also planned to add enough detail for it to work as a smoothie sculpture.

I will concentrate on the feather details in this article. One of the toucan’s interesting a natomical features is that it does not have scapular feathers. Instead, it has a very large and thickly feathered mantle group that covers the wing’s inner dorsal section. This inner dorsal section has concentrated wing coverts. Like other toucans, the chestnut-mandibled variety has 20 flight feathers: 10 primary and 10 secondary remiges. They do not have tertials. Toucans also have 10 (five pairs) of tail rectrices.

Read the rest of this article in Wildfowl Carving Magazine's Winter 2016 issue.