Newell's Shearwater decoy

thingiverse

I used the model of a duck decoy from 3DWP to make a model of a Newell's Shearwater bird. I used the sculpt tools in Meshmixer to change its appearance from a sitting duck to a sitting shearwater based on reference photographs. Although one side of the head still has a slight concavity left over from the duck. Not too noticeable, and I like that it shows where it came from. The models were printed at Kaua'i Makerspace, then hand painted by my girlfriend. Thank you both! They were printed 11 inches from the front of the bird's breast to the tip of it's tail, just slightly larger than life size. Newell's Shearwaters are an endangered species of seabird that breeds almost exclusively on Kaua'i island. They make their nests high in the mountains in burrows. Once the chick hatches and gets old enough, it has to make its very first flight all the way from the mountains to their feeding grounds on the ocean. They fledge at night and they used to navigate by the moon, but these days some get confused by artificial lights and land on land by mistake, where they might fall prey to cats or get hit by cars. They can't take off again because they are adapted for taking off with the help of wind in high places or on the open ocean, rather than from a calm flat place like a shopping mall. I wanted to study how often these grounded chicks are found and rescued by people, so I used these decoys.