The dead-bird detective

As the only criminal forensic ornithologist in the U.S., Pepper Trail helps build cases against bird smugglers and poachers. His mission: Protect rare birds by identifying them in death.

Trail in his lab. He handles more than 100 cases every year.
(Image credit: Tom Fowlks)

Pepper Trail is the first to admit he has an unusual skill set. Give him a single feather or a small fragment of a claw or a cooked hunk of breast meat, and he'll tell you the species of bird from which it came. As the world's leading criminal forensic ornithologist, Trail is asked day in and day out to perform these exact tasks. Over the past 18 years he has assisted with hundreds of investigations, testified in federal court 15 times, and handled more bird carcasses than anyone should. "All birders have life lists," Trail says. "I have a death list."

Trail isn't joking. He opens a file on his computer and scrolls through a list of 750 species of dead birds he has identified throughout his career. The decor of his work space at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, blends bird-nerd kitsch with macabre relics of closed cases. A "Waddling Penguin Pooper" wind-up toy sits on a bookshelf still in its original packaging. Atop a filing cabinet is a confiscated necklace made from the claws and skull of a cassowary. Nearby is a long, sleek feather ripped from an Andean condor wing and attached to a pin that customs agents seized from a polka dancer coming into Chicago. "There's actually a trade in condor feathers from Peru to Germany to decorate polka hats," Trail says.

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