People choose to give back to the community in many different ways, mentoring, baking, giving — bird lover and conservationist Miguel Mejias, 26, preserves bird carcasses.

To the uninitiated it all sounds a little unpleasant, but Mr Mejias loves it because he is contributing to knowledge about local birds.

“I skin birds,” Mr Mejias explained. The skins are stuffed, preserved and added to the museum’s collection of specimens.

“It means that if the staff want to show visitors what a particular local bird looks like they have a specimen on hand.

“Retired Government Conservation officer Dr David Wingate and Lisa Green, Collections Officer in the Natural History Museum at the Aquarium, taught me taxidermy,” said Mr Mejias. “I am happy that I am able to contribute and have bird skins in the collection.”

He said with the chemicals involved in the process there is sometimes an odd smell involved, but you get used to it.

“It is nice when you can work on a fresh dead bird,” he said. “It is usually not bloody. The skin comes off like a banana. There is no blood or anything.

“Sometimes if the bird was attacked by a cat or hit by a car, then there might be a bit of internal bleeding. To me it is art.”

Mr Mejias has a passion for birds and bird watching.

He recently graduated from Trent University in Canada with a degree in Wildlife and Conservation Biology.

He is now volunteering in the museum until he enters a graduate programme in September.

He recently gave a talk to local children about the secrets of local birds.

One of his secrets is that longtails, with their snowy white plumage, may look like feathery angels, but are far from it in personality.

The birds will often fight beak and claw for a burrow, even if there is a perfectly good burrow hole right next to it.

Sometimes they will stay locked in the bird version of a choke hold for hours, determined to win the battle. When Mr Mejias goes to graduate school he hopes to make longtails the focus of his dissertation.

“I want to study long tail nest success and selection,” he said.

When long tail nesting sites began to disappear through cliff erosion local conservationists quickly began erecting artificial burrows called igloos.

Some igloos were very successful while the birds showed little interest in others.

Now, Mr Mejias wants to find out what constitutes a good neighbourhood for Bermuda longtails.

“I am comparing artificial nests to natural nests,” he said. “We are trying to figure out what is the optimum igloo nest.

“I am looking at orientation and temperature. If the sun is beaming in at a certain time of day for hours on end the birds won’t be interested in using the burrow.”

His dream is to return home after graduate school and one day become the next Government Conservation Officer. One of his mentors is Dr David Wingate.

“He is my neighbour and took me under his wing (no pun intended) about three years ago,” said Mr Mejias. “Initially, I was interested in marine biology.

“I tried learning how to dive but I couldn’t equalise my ears. I was distraught because I thought I was useless.

“After I failed my diving test, two weeks later I met David. He took me out and showed me a bird called a Common tern.

“They breed here in April and May. They are very aggressive. I fell in love with birding. It was a good time.”

Mr Mejias said some people think that Bermuda is boring, but it isn’t so boring when you realise that over 200 different species of migratory birds visit Bermuda each year.

“It makes Bermuda exciting,” he said. “We had a new record today. Dr Wingate found an Arctic warbler which has never been recorded in Bermuda.

“David, and Wendy Frith, were the first people to see it. We went up today to see it. You never know what will turn up. It was a pretty big deal in the bird world.”

Mr Mejias has done some bird watching in Canada, as he also has an interest in forest song birds.

He said compared to other places, bird watching in Bermuda can be quite pleasant.

“You don’t have to worry about snakes, or dangerous spiders or mammals,” he said. “The most annoying thing is traffic or burrs that get stuck to your socks.”

He would ultimately like to go to Memorial University in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. One of the reasons is that Newfoundland is well known for its seabirds.