A collection of echidna tongues, a family of blue wrens, a brolga that hit a powerline and started a fire, the windpipe of a magpie goose, featherweight turtle hatchlings.
These are just part of more than 600 taxidermied birds, and 350 fauna specimens that form the lifelong "collecting hobby" of Bool Lagoon's Jack Bourne.
"I guess if my father had been a fabulous student and stayed in the classroom, maybe this wouldn't have happened," his daughter, Marion Patterson, said.
The expansive, eclectic collection of mostly native specimens has been enthralling visitors on South Australia's Limestone Coast for decades.
Ute rides to the swamp
Ms Patterson recalls growing up "in a family that spent most of its time wading the wetlands" of Bool Lagoon and Mary Seymour Conservation Park.
"My mother is also very much part of this story as a former National Park worker on the boardwalks of Bool Lagoon," she said.
"I reflect on the joy she got out of that over a lifetime: exploring, finding things, and sharing these things with the world."
That included family adventures in the back of the ute collecting creatures, meeting scientists and naturalists who came to visit, and peering on as an unending line of community members passed on birds to her dad for his collection.
"We've got a brolga that hit the powerline here at Bool Lagoon and a red-tailed black cockatoo that was collected on the Birdsville track when it hit a truck window," she said.
"There's so many things here that have been collected and entrusted to dad because he was known far and wide and his joy in life was when people brought him a bird that came with a story."
Lifelong 'hobby'
Ms Patterson said her dad should have been a scientist and not a farmer.
"He made a go of farming, but he was always passionate about his hobby and his hobby was birds," she said.
Ms Patterson is sharing The Bird Room, formerly Bourne's Bird Museum, with a new generation of visitors.
"I just love having school children come and visit," she said.
"I'll show them my bird feet collection and ask them why they think they're shaped as they are … I'll get them to match a beak to a bird.
"They always want to see the koala with four juveniles on her back, and of course the echidna puggle is pretty popular."
She said there was also "the thrill" of visitors who could add to the story and knowledge of bird species on display.
"My own knowledge on the specimens is always evolving and it's exciting to have people come to visit with specialist knowledge – sometimes they challenge the name of a bird, and I'm very happy to share their knowledge," she said.
She said the crows and ravens were not her favourites.
"But I love the sea birds; the darters and the cormorants; they've got an extra bit of webbing between their feet. That enables them to really dive down well under water."
Room's new era
Ms Patterson said the collection was low maintenance.
"They don't need food or water, or exercise," she said.
"They're just there for us to enjoy and learn about."
She said everything had a story.
"We've got an albino kookaburra, an albino crow and an albino magpie," she said.
"We've got a bearded dragon that had 26 eggs in her belly."
She said her dad loved the fact that he was able to preserve the birds.
"But even if an animal in its entirety can't be preserved, we can still often preserve a part of it — for instance we've got the wing of a bittern, because the whole bird couldn't be taxidermied," she said.
She said no interesting element was discarded, even the "pellets".
"Dad was given a tawny frogmouth and it had 13 centipedes inside it," she said.
"So we've got the last meals of some of the animals, and we can learn a lot about that side of the story too."
With a handful of grandchildren ever keen to take a sugar glider to show and tell or enlighten a tourist on the egg collection, Ms Patterson said she could see the collection growing into the future, even if it was not her doing the taxidermy.
"It's not my passion, but there's a young guy down the road at Robe so I can still add to the collection if and when I need to," she said.
She said she hoped the joy of Sunday scrub walks, finding things and discovering what was around when "we sit, stop, look and listen" remained with her grandchildren and caught on to other visitors to the Bird Room.
"When you're young the lure of the city seems powerful … but we have so much going on all around us here at Bool Lagoon – the birds, the animals, the snakes, frogs, the noise of their calls, all you need to do is take a moment to stop, look around and listen."
