Life Lessons from Dead Birds

by Pat McShea

The title of this publish, “Life Classes from Lifeless Birds,” is a phrase I exploit to summarize my lengthy profession as an educator at Carnegie Museum of Pure Historical past. For greater than 38 years I managed what’s now known as the Learning Collection, an unlimited assemblage of artifacts, rocks, minerals, fossils, and preserved vegetation and animals, all devoted to regional instructional use by means of loans to lecturers and different educators. The bird-focus of the abstract phrase displays each the quite a few avian supplies within the Studying Assortment and my choice to make use of a few of these objects each time I had the chance to work with college students. 

There was reasoning behind my fowl bias. For pure historical past subjects as narrowly targeted as bodily feeding variations, and as extensive ranging as power stream by means of ecosystems, fowl examples supplied college students, elementary, center, or highschool stage, with the prospect to make their very own topically related observations utilizing widespread fowl species round their college grounds, neighborhoods, and houses. My earliest displays, nonetheless, taught me how necessary it was to deal with questions from the viewers concerning the distinctive tutorial supplies. 

The scholars’ questions by no means appeared like accusations. Whether or not the setting was a classroom, an auditorium, or a park pavilion, after I stood earlier than them bearing the preserved stays of a as soon as dwelling fowl, they merely wished to learn about my connection to the creature’s demise. My denials assorted with the specimen in-hand. For the unfold wing of a hawk, or the cranium of an owl, touchable objects that require occasional alternative due to put on from repeated examinations, I’d clarify the specimen’s provenance as salvaged materials from road-killed or window-killed wildlife.  

“Birds and different wildlife have accidents, and generally already lifeless animals are donated to the museum. Permits and rules are concerned, and as a museum educator, my function within the course of is to retailer the our bodies in a freezer till they are often ready for instructional functions.” 

When displays concerned life-like, full physique taxidermy mounts, I used to be capable of cite far longer intervals of non-public separation. These birds are encased in transportable show containers with clear acrylic sides, and after I held them up, I drew the scholars’ consideration to the creature’s pose.  

“This fowl seems able to feed or to fly, and it’s been holding that place since lengthy earlier than I started working on the museum. I don’t know the way it died, however I can share some details about the way it has been preserved.” A gory abstract adopted, compressing into a number of sentences, hours of meticulous work with scalpels, wire, pins, and a fowl pores and skin with each feather nonetheless hooked up to its outer floor. “The feathers are actual, and the beak, together with some cranium bones and leg bones, are nonetheless in place. All of the physique components that may decay have been eliminated way back – the eyes, the mind, each inside organ, the muscle tissues. The eyes have been changed with glass replicas, of the right dimension, form, and colour, and the pores and skin, with feathers in place, was fitted over a custom-made kind formed similar to the fowl’s physique.” 

On some events, exploration of a presentation’s major subject was even additional delayed as a result of scholar inquiries shifted from the circumstances behind the genuine wildlife supplies to their very objective. “Why use animal stays in any respect?” I recall a scholar as soon as asking.  

My makes an attempt to reply such questions got here to incorporate a quote from the late Dr. John E. Rawlins, former Curator of the museum’s Part of Invertebrate Zoology, concerning the critically necessary causes for scientific collections to be created, maintained, and expanded. “Specimens are just like books in libraries, as a result of they’re volumes of knowledge that could be re-examined and reaffirmed,” Dr. Rawlins wrote, “However specimens are way more informative than books, as a result of the content material of a e book is acquired in full by a single kind of statement, studying. In contrast, the data content material of a specimen is acquired by various strategies of statement, a lot of which haven’t been utilized to most specimens, and a few of which haven’t but been devised and even dreamed of.” 

In advocating for using comparable supplies as instructional instruments, I expressed my hope that their present encounter with chosen fowl specimens may spark curiosity in, and even construct empathy for, the populations of varied wild fowl species. For example of this course of, I cited private expertise. Earlier than working on the museum, I used to be a Volunteer Naturalist at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve, the headquarters for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. My first encounter with a fowl research pores and skin (the inflexible, cotton-stuffed, and eyeless kind conventional in scientific collections) occurred throughout a coaching session there, when a Pied-billed Grebe specimen was the main target of a presentation. Because the research pores and skin was fastidiously handed among the many dozen contributors, we have been inspired to look at the fowl’s lobed toes, a bodily characteristic that supplied hints concerning the creature’s aquatic way of life. 

On sections of the decrease Allegheny, I had noticed single Pied-billed Grebes not less than a dozen occasions throughout winter months, floating placidly simply off sections of wooded riverbank, and making common, 30-second dives beneath the floor. When the research pores and skin reached me, I dutifully examined its toes, however I additionally used an index finger to softly half the dense pale breast feathers to disclose a layer of a lot denser grey down beneath them. In that second, the specimen supplied data, completely different than {a photograph} or written account, about how the birds I noticed on the icy Allegheny stayed heat. This tactile specimen-centered encounter satisfied me that preserved fowl stays can improve observations of the species’ extra quite a few dwelling kin. Throughout the years I managed the Studying Assortment this was among the many most necessary ideas I promoted. 

Pat McShea is an Educator at Carnegie Museum of Pure Historical past.

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