Some Procedures in Caring for a Research Collection of Birds

Abstract

EFFORTS to insure permanent and safe preservation of materials and at the same time to provide for the greatest facility of handling them are instinctive aims of a museum curator. To this end, members of the staff of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology have been seeking to discover improved methods of caring for the research collections under their charge. As a result, several ideas have been incorporated into our methods of housing and caring for birds and birds' eggs which may prove helpful to curatorial workers elsewhere. The first improvement pertains to small bird skins. All specimens of this nature are stored in trays with pulp-board bottoms within standard unit zinc cases. The skins are arranged in rows, from front to back, each skin with head at left and label extended over tail and feet, toward the right. With trays of the size in use here, 22y8 by 39 by 1 inches (inside dimensions), a single row of Hummingbirds averages 60 skins, while a row of Song Sparrows averages thirty skins. Three such rows of skins comfortably fill a tray, so that no label is obscured or placed at an angle in order to be completely visible. This item is important in housing a collection whose prime purpose is study of a skin together with all known data pertaining to it, for the label is an index to this information. This arrangement, however, has presented one obstacle to the best preservation of skins. Every time a tray is opened and closed, no matter how carefully it is done, each skin has a tendency to slip sideways. This not only leads to ruffling of feathers, but, sooner or later, to crowding of skins toward the back of the tray. After careful study of various methods, the following scheme has been adopted. Each large tray is divided into nine equal compartments by means of shallow containers, These small trays are made of light-weight, white cardboard, covered on the outside with a neutral tone paper which extends over the sides for