Why The Smithsonian | Colossal Collections Preserves Over 600,000 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 thanks to the detailed work of specialists who preserve skin and maintain every bird in the collection but most of these birds never see the museum floor so why do they need to be perfectly preserved the answer research whether it's identifying birds killed by airplanes or discovering evolutionary changes in duck bills. we're not just preparing this bird for use tomorrow we're preparing this bird for use for hundreds of years now. we went to the smithsonian to see how one specimen in the skins collection is added prepared and used for generations to come it starts with acquisition it says here on the label that this ostrich was sent by king mendelek as a present to president. Roosevelt specimens are usually donated by people or organizations this california condor was donated by the u.s fish and wildlife service this bird came from president theodore roosevelt's personal collection and this 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 this freezer. So it's on a left shelf from there our hawk is taken up to the prep lab into the skilled hands of museum specialists like Christina and her husband Brian. Brian did you do that, yes i did put the cotton in the mouth married couples fat this specimen is 996. So i prepared at least that many birds and mammals when you're at about 10000. It shows that you've been doing it for at least probably 20 years or so and you can do it. It was a fun fun exercise and it actually worked blindfolded or not 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. We want to remove as much of the muscle from the specimen that we can Brian removes 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 that's where gentler tools like his hands become useful. You have to go very slow methodical to get the skin off without ripping it. I'm pushing the skin rather than pulling it so i'm not stretching it brian also uses corn cob dust throughout the process to absorb any body fluids so the specimen is kept clean new people use a lot less dust and more experienced people just cover it with dust when removing the smaller parts of the bird like the head or the eyes the angle of the scalpel also makes a big difference you notice i'm cutting away from the skin there's been times where when you grab the eye it squirts at you sometimes birds that have more fat on their skin need to go through additional cleaning all this white goopy stuff this is all fat that needs to come off otherwise it will get rancid and then it will acidify and it will literally just ooze out of the skin they use this fat wheel machine to remove all the fat until you can see the feather track this is uh takes a little bit of practice because if you press too hard you will rip the skin once the fat is cleared more corncob dust is used to absorb the moisture and then the specimen is washed and dried you want to see me blow the sawdust off okay all right so with this we do it in the fume hood lot of dust everywhere christina uses a forced air dryer to blow off the sawdust and a hair dryer to fluff up the feathers adding a nice sheen to them to get the bird presentation ready brian will first tie the wings together to create a limited range of motion he approximates how far a cooper's hawk would have naturally spread their wings so in the future if somebody grabs the bird and opens up the wing to see the under side of the wing by tying it it'll make it the specimen stronger now the specimen is ready to be stuffed with cotton recreating its original shape we're trying to make a specimen that lasts forever and strong so i'm not a tailor or seamstress but you can sew up a bird pretty good 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 however i end up pinning it that's the way it's going to look the rest of its career at the smithsonian it takes probably close to 100 birds before somebody can go at it alone once they reach a thousand birds then we say that that person is generally an experienced preparator and they can teach other people very well

after 10 or so days this cooper's hawk will be completely dried and ready to debut on the exhibit floor the hawk will be just one of 20 specimens on display for the lights out exhibit all birds who have died from flying into skyscraper windows and they'll eventually join the larger skins collection with over 470 000 specimens helping researchers from all around the world like Lauren and Joshua researching how mating between domestic and wild ducks has changed the size and structure of their bills or jim with the feather identification lab team 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 percent 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 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 we're doing this his findings are sent to airfield biologists and engine manufacturers to adjust aircrafts and reduce accidents this bird was collected back in 1878 and so this bird was collected before airplanes were even imagined and put into this collection and now we're using it to identify a bird aircraft collision so we never know what these specimens are going to get used for but that's really why it's important to keep them forever a separate wings collection also helps for deeper analysis of feathers back in the old days they didn't make too many spread wings or flat skins and us in the feather lab really like that because it allows us access to feathers that occur under the wing and access in different areas of the bird where we might get a feather to but it's very difficult to get into a traditional museum skin other researchers might be exploring the microbiomes found in the wings like Gary he discovered that vulture wings have a bacterial group called Dinococcus one of the toughest organisms that can withstand high radiation so when I've exposed this wing into full sun the temperature on a day like today could be 90 degrees outside and about three minutes the temperature on the surface of this wing heats up to over 160 and that probably explains why Dinococcus is so dominant because it's one of the few bacterial groups that can actually reproduce at the Smithsonian 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 time stamps of the present bird population creating a record for future generations of researchers when the first bird preparators prepared birds they had no idea what dna was even though they didn't know that by doing a consistent bird prep it has enabled future researchers to conduct research on birds and you know i wish i had a time capsule to go into the future to see what our birds are going to be used for 100 years from now.