Blogs about Birds

Birds are incredibly important to Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The museum's Section of Birds contains nearly 190,000 specimens of birds. The most important of these are the 555 holotypes and syntypes. The Section of Birds staff also cares for approximately 196 specimens of extinct birds as well as specimens of many rare species collected decades—if not more than a century—ago.

August 16, 2024 by Erin Southerland

Natural History Collection Managers: The Stewards of Time Travel

by Serina Brady and Mariana Marques

For centuries, naturalists have collected the living world with the primary goal of understanding the diversity and complexity of our planet. In vast shelves and cabinets located in natural history museums, we find a diversity of specimens used daily by researchers, students, naturalists, and conservationists from around the world. These collections are not just archives of the past, but they also play a crucial role in addressing present-day challenges. By documenting the diversity of life, natural history collections provide a wealth of information that can be used to tackle issues such as climate change, pandemics, pathogen dispersals, deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and biodiversity loss. They can be considered the world’s most comprehensive and complex library, serving as a valuable resource for understanding and addressing the health of our planet.

Each specimen can be seen as a unique document or book recording an aspect of life on Earth at a particular time and place. They testify to the existence of a given species in a given locality and at a particular time, and they have a fundamental role as a guarantee of the scientific method: they allow objective observation that can be replicable. Natural history collections are an unparalleled source of information. For instance, a single bird or reptile specimen can provide data on its species, its habitat, its diet, and even its health. This wealth of information continues to allow researchers to understand better the past, the present, and the future of biodiversity, as well as the health of our planet – from local communities to the entire Earth.

*Carnegie Museum of Natural History Alcohol House, Collection of Amphibians and Reptiles. ©Photo by: Luis Ceríaco.*

*Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Collection of Birds. ©Photo by: Luis Ceríaco.*

These collections are usually housed in natural history museums. These museums are research, conservation, education, and public outreach hubs. Their collections are not limited to public exhibitions; in fact, the majority are housed in storage locations, generally out of sight and knowledge of the public. The process of collecting and storing these specimens is methodical. Each specimen is carefully collected, identified, and cataloged, then stored in a controlled environment to ensure long-term preservation. This process ensures that these specimens, often fragile and irreplaceable, are protected and can continue to be used for research and education for future generations.

Natural History Collections: a Tool to Face Global Changes

How can a specimen collected more than 100 years ago still be relevant today? Historical collections, like the one housed at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, provide baseline data points. These initial measurements or observations serve as a starting point for future comparisons. By providing a snapshot of life on Earth at a particular time and place, these specimens allow us to study change over time. The first and most crucial step is to gather those baseline data points!

From their early days, natural history collections’ primary goal was to inventory all life on Earth. However, with new cutting-edge technology, researchers can recover different data from historical specimens, data that the original collector didn’t even imagine. For example, when birds were collected from the U.S. Rust Belt, collectors didn’t realize that the specimens would be used to infer information about the history of pollution. Similarly, in the early twentieth century, the collectors of salamanders in the Appalachian woods didn’t even realize that some of those specimens were already infected with a pathogen that is devastating some of the world amphibian populations today.

However, because specimens were collected, we can now map the expansion of this pathogen through time or trace the amount of black carbon in the air over time through birds’ feathers to help fight and understand climate change. Part of the job of Collection Managers like us is not just to preserve and maintain the existing collections, but also to anticipate and predict the questions future researchers will be asking. This proactive approach ensures we gather today’s data to answer tomorrow’s questions. Specimens collected over a century ago are actively used today to answer questions about current and future environmental changes.

Specimens at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History collected during the early 1900s continued to have a significant role in research questions. These specimens give researchers insight into environmental changes through time, such as soot deposited on bird feathers or the presence of pathogens such as the chytrid fungus on amphibian populations across a specific time and place. Top: Two Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) specimens, one from 1895 (bottom) and the other from 1993 (top), showing the change in air quality over time (DuBay and Fuldner 2017). © Photo by Luis Ceríaco. Below: Amphibian specimen of Common Mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) being swabbed by a student from the University of Pittsburgh (Richards-Zawacki Lab) to detect the presence of the amphibian chytrid fungus – Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. ©Photo by: Rachel Verdi.

New applications of technologies, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, provide novel insights and usages for specimens. CT scans allow a complete 3D model of a specimen, including access to its internal morphology without damaging it. Using next-generation sequencing, scientists can use fragmented and degraded DNA for advanced analyses such as phylogenetic and phylogeographic analysis. These specialized methods allow us to study species’ evolutionary relationships and geographic distribution. These advanced techniques are just some of the ways natural history collections are being used to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

CT scans provide details of internal anatomy, presence of parasites, reproduction, etc., without damaging the specimen. CT scans are a significant technological advance for fields such as taxonomy, developmental and evolutionary biology, and studying functional morphology for natural history specimens. © Edward Stanley, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida (oVert – OpenVertebrate project).

A Biodiversity Backup

Continuing to grow our collections is not only scientifically essential but undeniably needed. Currently, 1.8 million species have been formally described to science, although worldwide experts predict that around 8.75 million species still await to be discovered, described, and named. Given current extinction rates, we are racing against time to describe the remaining 86% of the world’s species, many of which may become extinct before we know they even existed!

New species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and insects continue to be discovered worldwide, sometimes based on specimens tucked away in a museum for decades! These collections are not just archives of the past but also living libraries that continue to grow and evolve as new species are discovered. Each new discovery adds to our understanding of the natural world and underscores the importance of these collections in documenting and preserving Earth’s biodiversity. These new specimens contribute to our most significant and longest dataset of the natural world. But just as a library that stops acquiring new books, a natural history collection that doesn’t add new specimens will eventually lose its scientific value and relevancy. If we don’t continue to add physical proof of today’s biodiversity, we create unfillable gaps in one of our most powerful natural history data sets. Today is tomorrow’s past, and natural history collections act as a biodiversity backup of our planet!

Serina Brady is Collection Manager of Birds and Mariana Marques is Collection Manager of Amphibians and Reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Life Lessons from Dead Birds

by Pat McShea

The title of this post, “Life Lessons from Dead Birds,” is a phrase I use to summarize my long career as an educator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. For more than 38 years I managed what is now called the Learning Collection, an enormous assemblage of artifacts, rocks, minerals, fossils, and preserved plants and animals, all dedicated to regional educational use through loans to teachers and other educators. The bird-focus of the summary phrase reflects both the numerous avian materials in the Learning Collection and my preference to use some of those items whenever I had the opportunity to work with students.

belted kingfisher taxidermy mount study skin, wing, and skull — *Belted Kingfisher physical materials in the Learning Collection include a taxidermy mount, study skin, spread wing, and skull.*

There was reasoning behind my bird bias. For natural history topics as narrowly focused as physical feeding adaptations, and as wide ranging as energy flow through ecosystems, bird examples provided students, elementary, middle, or high school level, with the chance to make their own topically relevant observations using common bird species around their school grounds, neighborhoods, and homes. My earliest presentations, however, taught me how important it was to address questions from the audience about the unique instructional materials.

The students’ questions never seemed like accusations. Whether the setting was a classroom, an auditorium, or a park pavilion, when I stood before them bearing the preserved remains of a once living bird, they simply wanted to know about my connection to the creature’s death. My denials varied with the specimen in-hand. For the spread wing of a hawk, or the skull of an owl, touchable objects that require occasional replacement because of wear from repeated examinations, I’d explain the specimen’s provenance as salvaged material from road-killed or window-killed wildlife.

“Birds and other wildlife have accidents, and sometimes already dead animals are donated to the museum. Permits and regulations are involved, and as a museum educator, my role in the process is to store the bodies in a freezer until they can be prepared for educational purposes.”

*A Learning Collection storage drawer holds six bird study skins. Clockwise, Great Blue Heron, Pied-billed Grebe (3), American Bittern, and American Woodcock.*

When presentations involved life-like, full body taxidermy mounts, I was able to cite far longer periods of personal separation. These birds are encased in portable display boxes with clear acrylic sides, and when I held them up, I drew the students’ attention to the creature’s pose.

“This bird appears ready to feed or to fly, and it’s been holding that position since long before I began working at the museum. I don’t know how it died, but I can share some information about how it has been preserved.” A gory summary followed, compressing into a few sentences, hours of meticulous work with scalpels, wire, pins, and a bird skin with every feather still attached to its outer surface. “The feathers are real, and the beak, along with some skull bones and leg bones, are still in place. All the body parts that would decay were removed long ago – the eyes, the brain, every internal organ, the muscle tissues. The eyes were replaced with glass replicas, of the proper size, shape, and color, and the skin, with feathers in place, was fitted over a custom-made form shaped just like the bird’s body.”

On some occasions, exploration of a presentation’s main topic was even further delayed because student inquiries shifted from the circumstances behind the authentic wildlife materials to their very purpose. “Why use animal remains at all?” I recall a student once asking.

My attempts to answer such questions came to include a quote from the late Dr. John E. Rawlins, former Curator of the museum’s Section of Invertebrate Zoology, about the critically important reasons for scientific collections to be created, maintained, and expanded. “Specimens are similar to books in libraries, because they are volumes of information that may be re-examined and reaffirmed,” Dr. Rawlins wrote, “But specimens are much more informative than books, because the content of a book is acquired in full by a single type of observation, reading. By contrast, the information content of a specimen is acquired by diverse methods of observation, many of which have not been applied to most specimens, and some of which have not yet been devised or even dreamed of.”

In advocating for the use of similar materials as educational tools, I expressed my hope that their current encounter with selected bird specimens might spark interest in, and even build empathy for, the populations of various wild bird species. As an example of this process, I cited personal experience. Before working at the museum, I was a Volunteer Naturalist at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve, the headquarters for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. My first encounter with a bird study skin (the rigid, cotton-stuffed, and eyeless form traditional in scientific collections) occurred during a training session there, when a Pied-billed Grebe specimen was the focus of a presentation. As the study skin was carefully passed among the dozen participants, we were encouraged to examine the bird’s lobed toes, a physical feature that provided hints about the creature’s aquatic lifestyle.

*In carefully examining the study skin of a Pied-billed Grebe, you can learn about the dense down insulation of this aquatic bird.*

On sections of the lower Allegheny, I had observed single Pied-billed Grebes at least a dozen times during winter months, floating placidly just off sections of wooded riverbank, and making regular, 30-second dives beneath the surface. When the study skin reached me, I dutifully examined its toes, but I also used an index finger to gently part the dense pale breast feathers to reveal a layer of much denser gray down beneath them. In that moment, the specimen provided information, different than a photograph or written account, about how the birds I observed on the icy Allegheny stayed warm. This tactile specimen-centered encounter convinced me that preserved bird remains can enhance observations of the species’ more numerous living kin. During the years I managed the Learning Collection this was among the most important concepts I promoted.

Pat McShea is an Educator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

A Year in Review: Bird Banding 2023

by Annie Lindsay

Nestled between the Chestnut and Laurel Ridges near the town of Rector, Pennsylvania lies Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental field research station, where ornithologists have been operating a long-term bird banding station since June 1961. In 62 years of banding birds year-round, we’ve gathered more than 830,000 banding records of nearly 200 species. Some, like the Cedar Waxwing, have tens of thousands of records in our dataset, whereas single individuals are the only representatives of other species, like Kirtland’s Warbler.

Banding Field Tech Grace Muench releasing a Sharp-shinned Hawk. — *Banding Field Tech Grace Muench releasing a Sharp-shinned Hawk, one of her favorite moments from the year*.

At Powdermill, we band birds all year, varying our effort seasonally, which gives us a picture of what species we expect to see at any given time of year and the relative abundance of those species. Each season brings something new. By March we are eagerly awaiting the earliest spring migrants and as spring progresses, we revel in the flood of colorful songbirds in their breeding plumage. Summer brings breeding birds and our anticipation of which individuals will return year after year. As summer fades into fall, we enjoy the subtle beauty of birds in their non-breeding plumage as they migrate south to their wintering grounds. By mid-November, almost all migrating songbirds have passed through and we are in our winter banding season, dominated by cold-hardy birds that are often recaptured between years.

*Fall Banding Field Tech Jordan Mouton using a black light to age a Northern Saw-whet Owl. Saw-whet and screech owls were the highlights of Jordan’s season.*

In 2023, we banded 9,095 new birds and recaptured 5,074 individuals of 123 species (plus one hybrid). The most abundant species was Swainson’s Thrush with 631 new birds banded this year, followed by Ruby-crowned Kinglet (596), Gray Catbird (484), and Cedar Waxwing (447). The year saw slightly lower numbers than average overall, but several species had notably high captures and some even set spring or fall season records. In spring, 11 Black-billed Cuckoos edged out last year’s ten to claim that season’s record, and in the fall nine Louisiana Waterthrushes (a species that is a very early migrant and generally scarce during our fall months), 158 Ovenbirds, and two Bicknell’s Thrushes set fall high records.

We can use these numbers to compare 2023 to previous years and to totals from other banding stations, but the stories about the year’s highlights are most compelling. Each year when we analyze our data, we eagerly look for species that set new record high totals, individuals that represent early or late banding dates, or recaptures that are particularly old birds, and await reports that our banded birds have been recaptured at another station.

This year, as in recent years, many of the species that had above average totals are species that have been increasing in southwestern Pennsylvania, which is a trend that is reflected in Christmas Bird Count data. The core of these species’ ranges has historically been a bit farther south, but they seem to have recently been expanding northward. For example, Carolina Wrens and Red-bellied Woodpeckers are year-round residents in southwestern Pennsylvania and are encountered far more often now than they were a few decades ago. Similarly, Yellow-throated Warbler is a species that tends not to breed much farther north than non-Appalachian Pennsylvania, but is a species that we’ve seen in spring attempting to establish territories and even breeding.

Swainson’s Warbler caught in spring 2023, the 8th of its species ever banded at Powdermill. — *Swainson’s Warbler caught in spring 2023, the 8^th of its species ever banded at Powdermill.*

This year’s exciting captures began with a Swainson’s Warbler that was caught on May 11, only the eighth individual of that species in Powdermill’s banding dataset. Swainson’s Warblers breed significantly south of Pennsylvania in the very southern part of West Virginia, but since 2020, birders have spotted several nearby in the spring and summer and the first breeding record in the state was confirmed in summer 2023. This unexpected capture, affectionately nicknamed “Sword-billed Warbler” by the banding crew, was certainly a favorite.

This fall, something happened that is rare for a 62-year-old banding station: we added a new species to our dataset. Bicknell’s Thrush was considered a subspecies of the more common Gray-cheeked Thrush until 1995 when there was enough evidence (based on morphology, vocalizations, habitat, and migration patterns) to elevate Bicknell’s to full species status. Over the years, a few possible Bicknell’s Thrushes were banded at Powdermill, but it wasn’t until this year that two were definitively identified here, one on September 14 and one on October 8.

solitary sandpiper — *Solitary Sandpiper, fall Banding Field Tech Lindsey Doyel’s season highlight.*

One of the questions we are frequently asked is how long birds live. While it’s difficult to know how long each species lives on average, recapturing birds between seasons tells us something about how long they can live. In general, smaller birds are shorter-lived and larger birds are longer-lived. Catching a bird with a band and looking back through the data to see how long ago it was initially banded and how many times it’s been captured over the years is a highlight for the banding crew. Several notable standouts in 2023 include:

A Ruby-throated Hummingbird that was banded in August 2021 and aged as a bird that had hatched in a previous year was recaptured exactly two years later, making her at least three years old.

A Kentucky Warbler that was banded in June 2018 and aged as a bird that had hatched the previous summer was recaptured in May, making it six years old.

A Gray Catbird that was banded in August 2015, the summer it hatched, was recaptured this fall when it had a refeathering brood patch (the bare patch of skin on the belly that songbirds develop to help incubate eggs). This catbird was eight years old and, because female catbirds develop brood patches when they’re breeding, we were able to determine that she was breeding at Powdermill that summer.

Black-capped Chickadees are frequently recaptured because they’re year-round residents at Powdermill and because they tend to spend time at feeders near the banding station. Because of this, we often have their band numbers memorized and sometimes can recognize individual mannerisms. This fall, we caught one such chickadee several times; it was banded in April 2016 and aged as a bird that had hatched the previous summer, making it eight years old!

Brewster's Warbler — *“Brewster’s” Warbler, a hybrid between Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warblers, was fall Banding Field Tech Connor O’Hea’s season highlight.*

There were many more old birds captured in 2023, each one delighting the crew with its history.

PARC is back to the winter banding schedule and we’re looking forward to what 2024 will bring us!

To learn more about bird banding, please see the post “What is bird banding?”

Annie Lindsay is the Banding Program Manager at Powdermill Nature Reserve.

2023 Rector Christmas Bird Count Results

by Annie Lindsay

*American Woodcock. Photo by Powdermill Avian Research Center.*

For a few hours before dawn on the chilly morning of December 16, several intrepid birders scoured the Rector Christmas Bird Count circle for owls, and with a bit of luck, counted four species. Eastern Screech-Owl is a common, year-round resident and a respectable 14 individuals were heard calling that morning, in addition to one encounter each of Great Horned Owl, Barred Owl, and Northern Saw-whet Owl.

Once the sun rose that morning, the owlers were joined by many other birders to spend the day systematically searching for and tallying all the birds they could see and hear throughout the day. The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is an annual citizen science tradition that began in 1900 with the goal of counting all the birds that participants encounter within an established 15-mile diameter circle on a selected day between December 14 and January 5. The Rector count, centered just northwest of Powdermill Nature Reserve, covers a variety of habitats and elevations spanning from the Chestnut Ridge to the Laurel Ridge, and has been going strong since 1974. Because of the diversity of habitats and the dedication of participants, Rector CBCers have totaled 132 species within the circle, including a new species added this year.

*Rusty Blackbird. Photo by Powdermill Avian Research Center.*

The Rector count circle is divided into sectors, and this year’s 43 participants fanned out to cover as much territory as they could within their assigned sectors, some opting to hike trails in the state parks and forest, some traveling the roads by car, stopping periodically to listen and watch, and eight birders counted the species they saw visiting their feeders and yards. At the end of the day, everyone gathered at Powdermill for the tally dinner, an evening to chat about the day’s events, share a delicious meal, and to add up the birds each group counted. This year’s total was above average with 6,131 individuals of 76 species tallied, surpassed in recent years only by 2021, a year with unseasonably warm temperatures extending quite late into the fall that garnered several species not normally expected to persist into December. Many species set new high-count records this year, including Canada Goose, Black Vulture, Red-tailed Hawk, American Woodcock, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker, Carolina Wren, Eastern Bluebird, Northern Mockingbird, and Red-winged Blackbird. Although some of these high counts likely can be attributed to increased effort and number of participants, almost all of these species seem to be expanding their ranges northward, or are occurring in southwestern Pennsylvania in greater numbers, often year-round, a trend ornithologists have been noticing in recent years.

*Pileated Woodpecker. Photo by Alex Busato.*

Excitement is always high at the tally, and this year was no exception. Highlights of the count were plentiful as participants shared photos and stories about their birds-of-the-day. One group found two Ruby-crowned Kinglets (nearly matching the count’s high total of three set in 2021) and a massive flock of 915 Canada Geese, which was the bulk of the day’s record-setting total. Another group found an Eastern Phoebe, a species recorded only twice before on the Rector CBC, perched in a tree pumping its tail up and down. Three participants photographed a Rough-legged Hawk, a species uncommon enough that they knew they would have to “prove” their identification, soaring over farm fields while driving to get lunch. And another group reported a flock of 150 Red-winged and 20 Rusty Blackbirds, setting a record for Red-wingeds and the highest count of Rusties since the mid-1990s. They also spotted an American Woodcock, a new species for the count, doing its bobbing walk in a wet spot along a road.

*Rough-legged Hawk. Photo by Mark McConaughy.*

One more notable finding of the day was three leucistic Red-tailed Hawks. At least one had been spotted at the edges of fields near Powdermill for much of 2023, but on the day of the count, two different birds, with varying amounts of white, were spotted and photographed in those fields, and a third was spotted many miles to the northwest in a different sector. The word “leucistic” refers to lack of pigment, and these leucistic birds have one or, in the case of these particular hawks, many white feathers. Finding one leucistic bird is uncommon, but three relatively large birds showing this same coloration is quite rare.

*Leucistic Red-tailed Hawk. Photo by Mark McConaughy.*

As we wrap up the 124^th Christmas Bird Count season and submit the Rector count’s data to the National Audubon Society, we thank all participants for their commitment to the birds and look forward to next year’s count!

For more information about the Christmas Bird Count and to see how the data are used, please visit: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

Final 2023 Tally:

*Canada Goose – 1009

Mute Swan – 4

Tundra Swan – 1

Wood Duck – 1

American Black Duck – 13

Mallard – 74

Bufflehead – 2

Hooded Merganser – 11

Common Merganser – 3

Ruddy Duck – 6

Ring-necked Pheasant – 7

Wild Turkey – 14

Pied Billed Grebe – 6

*Black Vulture – 55

Turkey Vulture – 80

Northern Harrier – 1

Sharp-shinned Hawk – 1

Cooper’s Hawk – 2

Black Eagle – 2

Red-shouldered Hawk – 9

*Red-tailed Hawk – 66

Rough-legged Hawk – 1

Killdeer – 3

*American Woodcock – 1

Rock Pigeon – 37

Mourning Dove – 90

Eastern Screech-Owl – 14

Great Horned Owl – 1

Barred Owl – 1

Northern Saw-whet Owl – 1

Belted Kingfisher – 8

Red-headed Woodpecker – 6

*Red-bellied Woodpecker – 102

*Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – 16

Downy Woodpecker – 66

*Hairy Woodpecker – 28

Northern Flicker – 17

*Pileated Woodpecker – 38

American Kestrel – 2

Eastern Phoebe – 1

Blue Jay – 287

American Crow – 764

Common Raven – 25

Carolina Chickadee – 1

Black-capped Chickadee – 311

Tufted Titmouse – 212

Red-breasted Nuthatch – 7

White-breasted Nuthatch – 144

Brown Creeper – 8

Winter Wren – 3

*Carolina Wren – 86

Golden-crowned Kinglet – 60

Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 2

*Eastern Bluebird – 191

Hermit Thrush – 5

American Robin – 85

*Northern Mockingbird – 19

European Starling – 794

Cedar Waxwing – 45

Yellow-rumped Warbler – 7

American Tree Sparrow – 7

Field Sparrow – 5

Fox Sparrow – 1

Dark-eyed Junco – 411

White-throated Sparrow – 105

Song Sparrow – 117

Swamp Sparrow – 12

Eastern Towhee – 3

Northern Cardinal – 168

*Red-winged Blackbird – 151

Rusty Blackbird – 20

House Finch – 110

Purple Finch – 1

American Goldfinch – 90

House Sparrow – 61

Total Species: 76

Total Individuals: 6,131

*asterisk indicates high total for count

Annie Lindsay is Banding Program Manager at Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center.

Birds in “Twelve Days of Christmas”: a Museum Search

by Patrick McShea

The Twelve Days of Christmas

When a traditional song about Christmas gifts reaches young ears, the centuries-old lyrics naturally prompt questions. If you’ve been on the receiving end of inquiries such as “What’s a partridge?”, a museum visit can provide identity information for the abundance of birds mentioned in the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Although the birds cited below aren’t precise matches for European species of the song, locating these feathered references can renew your own appreciation for what might be an overly familiar tune.

Inspiration and informational reference for the re-interpretation of several exhibits comes from a 2018 American Ornithological Society blog post by Bob Montgomerie, an evolutionary biologist at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. Dr. Montgomerie’s post is titled “Three French Hens.”

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

*Ruffed Grouse taxidermy mount in Discovery Basecamp.*

In Pennsylvania, the Ruffed Grouse has reigned as state bird since 1931. The species’ collective value to Pennsylvania residents includes the gamebird’s historic importance as a food source and its current role as the focus of much upland sport hunting. The bird referenced in the song might well have been the Red-legged Partridge, a European species known to science as Alectoris rufa, however, the Ruffed Grouse is a decent substitute because the bird, which is known to perch in trees occasionally, is routinely called “partridge” in Maine and other portions of the northeast.

Two Turtle Doves

*Passenger Pigeon taxidermy mount in Bird Hall*

The European Turtle Dove, Streptopelia turtur, is a member of the bird family of doves and pigeons known as Columbidae. Generally, the smaller species in the family are called doves, and the larger species ae called pigeons. The Passenger Pigeon is the most notable family member on display at the museum.

Passenger Pigeons were once so abundant in eastern North America that flocks darkened the skies for hours when the birds migrated to access seasonal feeding areas and nesting sites.

Sustainable use of the birds by humans did not continue into the 19^th Century. By mid-century, Passenger Pigeons became an unregulated commodity in the rapidly expanding American economy, with the country’s growing railroad network and parallel telegraph system providing unprecedented means for sharing word of flock locations, transporting hunters to those sites, and shipping harvested birds to distant markets.

Three French Hens

The song reference is to a specific breed of domestic chicken. There are no domestic chickens on display in the museum, but the species is usually well-represented in the food selections offered within the building’s dining areas. Some scientists have speculated that our current reliance on domestic chickens as a global source of protein for human consumption might someday leave deposits of chicken bones as an identifying mark of the Anthropocene, a proposed name for the current geologic age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

Four Calling Birds

Northern Raven taxidermy mount in a diorama of its habitat

If we use the cited author’s research finding, (The original ‘colly bird’ was the Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula) as ‘colly’ meant ‘black’ as in ‘coaly,’ and is why border collies bear that name.) the Northern Ravens in an Art of the Diorama display can fill this slot. Another candidate is the American Crow, a species frequently observed passing over the museum building at dusk during winter evenings, heading to local roosts in scattered flocks that number in the thousands. Ornithologists explain the birds’ collective behavior as taking advantage of a “heat island effect,” a base temperature in a city that is five or more degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside.

Five Golden Rings

Close-up of a bird band on bird taxidermy mount

“Five golden rings” might also have a bird connection. Dr. Montgomerie’s post mentions both Gold Finches and Ring-necked Pheasants as possible references, but the museum’s long history of bird banding at Powdermill Nature Reserve, the location of Powdermill Avian Research Center (PARC), allows a different approach. Bird banding is a research practice that involves capturing wild birds, marking them with numbered leg bands, and releasing them unharmed. In some parts of the world this centuries’ old effort to verify bird movements through recovered birds is called “ringing.” It is admittedly a stretch between gold rings and aluminum bands, but for a close look at the latter, check the tabletops in Discovery Basecamp for an encased taxidermy mount of a Gray Catbird bearing one of the lightweight markers on its right leg.

Six Geese A-laying

goose taxidermy mounts in a museum diorama

Although the lyric refers to a domestic variety, a scene focused on an enormous gathering of a wild species in The Art of the Diorama demonstrates the eventual outcome of “geese a-laying” – more geese. Here Blue Geese, a variety of Snow Geese with dark plumage, are shown gathering near James Bay in preparation for a continent-crossing migration. The dark-headed geese in the foreground are young of the year, the most recent product of “Snow Geese a-laying.”

Seven Swans A-swimming

A lone Tundra Swan watches over Discovery Basecamp from a high perch. Thousands of these birds fly, rather than swim, across Pennsylvania spring and fall during seasonal migrations between Arctic nesting grounds and wintering territory along the Chesapeake Bay. Their fall passage over western Pennsylvania, announced by flock calls some people describe as “like the baying of distant hounds,” generally occurs between mid-November and early December.

Patrick McShea is an Educator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Museum Connections to a College Lab

by Patrick McShea

During a recent Vertebrate Diversity Lab at Duquesne University, Dr. Brady Porter’s students closely examined preserved wildlife material on five rows of tables. Weeks earlier, Brady arranged to borrow a variety of vertebrate specimens from Carnegie Museum of Natural History; lizards, snakes, and turtles preserved whole in jars of alcohol, a set of mammal skulls presenting strikingly different dental formulas, and birds preserved in the flat and ridged form known as study skins.

As the manager of the museum’s Educator Loan Collection, I provided 15 bird study skins for the lab. When I expressed curiosity about how the preserved birds would be received by a college audience, Brady invited me to observe the encounter.

students looking at bird study skins on a lab table

What I observed was an exceptional blend of instruction and inquiry. As the students circulated, singly or in pairs, among the specimen-rich workstations, Brady also moved about the lab, answering individual questions, and providing pointed suggestions in a voice clearly audible to every member of the class. While I watched two students gently check a pied-billed grebe study skin for the presence or absence of the stiff facial feathers known as bristles, for example, I listened to Brady’s advice to a student at an adjoining table who had just picked-up an opossum jaw. “It might be easier to do the dental formula on one side and then double it. And look carefully at every place a tooth could be because teeth can fall out.”

grebe and woodcock study skins on a table — *Study skins – American Woodcock (top) and Pied-billed Grebe (bottom)*

No caveats were necessary for the bird study skins, where worksheet questions directed students to look for and interpret the functional importance of such features as the sharp talons and distinctive hooked beaks of raptors, and the tiny, but fully functional feet of hummingbirds. Some questions served to remind the students about how whole suites of physical features were historically used to create the detailed chart of relationships that is the vertebrate classification system. Here the pied-billed grebe, a species so adapted to aquatic life that mated pairs construct floating nests, provided a tactile reference point for a question directed several levels back in the classification chart. “What is the name of the bird Clade that includes most of the waterbirds?”

During an hour-long observation of the lab, it was clear how much the professor-directed learning experience was dependent upon the authentic materials. Had photographs or digital images been used as substitutes, they would not have conveyed all the information embodied in the preserved birds. In less structured situations, however, the usefulness of study skins as teaching aids fades.

At the museum, visitors encounter 21 study skins displayed amidst nearly 300 life-like taxidermy mounts in Bird Hall.

Museum label that explains study skins. Text says "You will see two types of bird specimens in this hallway. Taxidermy mounts: life-like display, less than one percent of the collection is prepared this way. Study skin: preserved flat on its back for easy storage and scientific study." There are illustrations of both study skins and a taxidermy mount.

On the Grand Staircase side of the long narrow exhibition, an informational panel introduces the two types of bird specimens, summarizes their difference, and notes how ratio of preservation forms is completely reversed behind-the-scenes.

In explaining the usefulness of bird study skins to elementary and middle school audiences, I have long relied upon an explanation of theoretic researchers visiting the CMNH Section of Birds to gather data for a study about wing length variation in a species with a wide geographic range. “They’d have a difficult time working with taxidermy mounts.” I’d explain. “One mount might have been prepared with the wings fully open, another with them partially open, and a third with folded wings. With the standardized preparation method and form of study skins, those researchers would get accurate comparable measurements.”

My visit to the Duquesne University biology lab has added a more student-focused detail to the explanation: “Lots of the physical characteristics used for classification can be observed by examining bird study skins, and in a future class you might have an opportunity to be a close observer.”

Patrick McShea is an Educator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

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