Colonial birding in the Thai-Malay Peninsula: Birds from the Selangor Museum now in World Museum, Liverpool

Abstract

In the early 1900s the zoological staff of the Selangor Museum regularly collected birds in mountainous parts of the Thai-Malay Peninsula, giving hill stations a prominent role in Malaysian ornithology. H. C. Robinson published a synopsis of the Selangor Museum's collections of mountain birds in 1909, drawing connections to the work of other prominent European and American bird collectors. The Selangor Museum made a large donation of specimens to the Liverpool Museums in 1914, and several of these mountain birds are now in the World Museum, National Museums Liverpool. An examination of the provenance of these specimens reveals the synergy between the growth of bird collections from the peninsula, the transition to bird 'watching', and the development of some of these hill stations into enduringly popular resorts.