Carnegie Museum of Natural History
One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
In its early years, Carnegie Museum often purchased birds from different areas of the world. One excellent collection came from Sir Walter Buller who built a collection from New Zealand for his groundbreaking books on birds of that country. We have more bird specimens from that country (645) than any other museum in the United States like this mounted little blue penguin on display in Bird Hall.
Both of these male and female bird types pretend to have broken wings to distract predators close to their nest.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
Our Section of Birds holds approximately the eighth largest collection of birds in North America.
by Patrick McShea
Remember pheasants? Who could forget a long-tailed, chicken-sized bird with a green head and bright copper body? It wasn’t even necessary to see the birds to know they were around. Every spring the two-syllable rooster-like crows of male ring-necks marked the passage of days in overgrown fields at the edge of many Pittsburgh neighborhoods, and those repeated territorial claims carried for hundreds of yards.
Pheasants, which are not native to North America, were introduced to the U.S. from Asia during the 1880s. In Pennsylvania, pheasant populations peaked in the early 1970s. Wildlife biologists explain the bird’s decline since then as connected to habitat loss:
“In some places fields and brushy hollows gradually became forests, while in others suitable habitat was rapidly lost to housing, retail, and industrial development. On many farms, where the conditions to appear ideal for the birds, changes in hay-mowing schedules and repeated use of herbicides and pesticides make for poor pheasant habitat.”
Hear audio of pheasants crowing.
Patrick McShea works in the Education and Visitor Experience department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences of working at the museum.
We have representatives of roughly 6,200 species of birds in our museum’s Section of Birds. Counting subspecies, we have over 13,000 different bird subspecies.
This is a close up view of peafowl feathers. Although most people refer to this bird as a peacock, technically only males are called peacocks whereas females are called peahens.
