Natural History Museum Secret to Preserve the Bird Specimens

 The Smithsonian Natural History Museum houses over 600,000 bird specimens from the last 200 years. And new specimens are added each month. They preserve, skin, and maintain every bird in the collection. Why do they need to be perfectly preserved? 

The answer is research, whether it's identifying birds killed by airplanes or discovering evolutionary changes in duck bills. They are not just preparing this bird for tomorrow use but for use for hundreds of years from now. 

How one specimen in the skins collection is added, prepared, and used for generations to come? It starts with the acquisition. 

Specimens are usually donated by people or organizations. The California condor in the museum was donated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That bird came from President Theodore Roosevelt's personal collection. And Cooper's hawk died while crashing into a building window. It was donated back in 2017 and is about to get its spotlight in an upcoming exhibit, but it was initially stored in a freezer. 

From there, the hawk is taken up to the prep lab into the skilled hands of museum specialists. 

The specimens are 9,926. So, They’ve prepared at least that many birds and mammals. When you're at about 10,000, it shows that you've been doing it for at least probably 20 years or so. 

The specialists’ first thaw, weigh, and measure the hawk. And then they pick up a scalpel to start separating the skin from the muscles and fat. Since these are going to be stored as dried specimens, the muscles from the specimens are removed.The specialists remove the skin from the body of the bird, discarding the soft tissues and oil glands, which would cause the specimen to rot. And it's crucial to get every piece of fat out without damaging the skin, since these specimens are meant to last for years to come. 

Once the fat is cleared, more corn cob dust is used to absorb the moisture, and then the specimen is washed and dried. 

The scientists are trying to make a specimen that lasts forever and is strong. A scientist says, “We get the feathers; make sure that they're arranged properly, in the right order. So that'll assist researchers later.” The last step is pinning the bird onto a board to dry into its permanent                                                                                             position. 

Once they reach 1,000 birds, then it can be said that the person is generally an experienced preparator and they can teach other people very well. 

He works with government agencies to identify birds killed during air strikes. We get about 10,000 strikes a year. The busiest times are in the fall and the spring. And this place, the division of birds, is the perfect place for us to be, because we have 80% of the world's bird species represented in this collection. So if there's a bird strike that happens in the world, we likely have a specimen to match it up to. This is a bird-strike sample, the remnants of a bird-aircraft collision that has been sent to us for us to identify. So I can see that we've got a couple wing feathers here. Jim (scientist) says, We've got a tail feather, we've got some body feathers. So we can actually take this feather out and match up these tail feathers quite well to the barn swallow. And we've got even these nice little peachy feathers that were doing this. Abby Tang says the findings of scientists are sent to airfield biologists and engine manufacturers to adjust aircrafts and reduce accidents. 

That bird was collected back in 1878. And so this bird was collected before airplanes were even imagined and put into that collection. And now they are using it to identify a bird-aircraft collision. 

Other researchers might be exploring the micro biomes found in the wings. Like the vulture, wings are discovered that have a bacterial group called Deinococcus, one of the toughest organisms that can withstand high radiation. 

These are just two of the collections within the bird division. There's also the organ collection, soaked in ethanol for preservation; the skeletons, with each bone meticulously numbered; and mounted birds that retired from being on the exhibit floor. All of these are timestamps of the present bird population, creating a record for future generations of researchers. When the first bird propagators prepared birds, they had no idea what DNA was. Even though they didn't know that, by doing consistent bird prep, it has enabled future researchers to conduct research on birds.