I am finishing up my master’s degree in ornithology. That’s the study of birds in case you didn’t know or the title didn’t clue you in. The last step in this long process is to come up with and complete a graduate study. Mine is to determine weather feather structure has changed over the last 100 years. Fortunately our university has a wonderful collection of native birds preserved in a collection. For my study I chose the common grackle, white winged dove and cardinal because sampling would be easy.

At first I tried using microscopes. But I soon found that this was like looking at a few trees to try to determine if a forest was getting thicker or thinner. The next thing I tried was using fairly high resolution photography. I got some nice pictures. But analyzing the pictures proved impossible.

Finally I got with a buddy of mine that works for a document imaging service. They scan documents and save them in various digital formats. It was like a light bulb switched on over my head. The ornithology department stepped up and did a scanner rental. We scanned feathers and were able to digitally look at the results. And it looks like feather structure has not changed at all over the last 100 years.

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