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(Historical) Explorations

Posted in Birds, California, Collecting, Conservation, Natural History, Reading Suggestions, Sierra Nevadas with tags animals, Birds, burn, california, fire ecology, history, mountains, natural history, Nature, outdoors, photography, Science, sierra nevadas, wildlife photography on June 10, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Discussions of natural history can’t escape a parallel human history. Living in Western North America, shadows of the multifarious frontiersman haven’t slipped from the horizon. I’ve been dwelling heavily on these explorers, here for new opportunities, to claim land for their sovereignty, or to assess the biotic diversity held in vast “unexplored” territories.

In the past weeks I’ve had an inordinate amount of time indoors, to think, read, and write. I’m supposed to be outside working. Excessive rain, snow, and wind has kept our daily point counts of birds at bay. If your goal is to detect the full species array and individual abundances, counting in marginal weather will not give you accurate results. If you doubt that rain, snow, or wind can effect accuracy, or think that maybe I’m just being a wimp, go outside on a less than ideal spring morning and listen for bird song. You may hear some but compare that to a nice, warm and dry, spring morning. Then you’ll understand.

Because of all the time indoors, I’ve not had much face time with nature and it’s got me in a philosophical mood. As a modern field biologist, you are sometimes driven to your limits of endurance and forced to put up with uncomfortable situations. But when it all pans out, we still have it pretty easy compared to people who first started exploring the West in the name of science.

While I don’t wish to wholly glorify explorations in Western North America, which ultimately displaced and exploited hundreds of thousands of native peoples, they are certainly fascinating to the modern day natural historian. The most famous of all explorations in the West was of course the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Between 1804 and 1806, it penetrated the Northwest Territory overland, surveying in the name of the United States for what made up part of the Louisiana Purchase (of land that none of the parties involved owned). President Jefferson wasn’t just looking to survey a land grab though, he wanted the expedition to collect and record on pretty much any area of natural science they could. While neither of the party leaders were trained naturalists, they came back with a formidable collection of specimens and journals. I have occasional encounters with two charismatic birds that bear their names, Lewis’s Woodpeckers and Clark’s Nutcrackers. There’s no ignoring these explorers, especially in the Pacific Northwest, yet the biota of the west are riddled with the whispers of early scientific explorers.

Out my door, I can look across camp, through numerous Douglas Firs to a great sentry of a pine. It stands straight, with a smooth, even bark and massive branches, a good height above neighboring trees. A Scottish botanist by the name of David Douglas, described this formidable tree, Pinus lambertiana, the Sugar Pine. The sugar part of the name came from the sweet resin, the lambertiana for Aylmer Bourke Labert a British botanist who wrote a folio on the genus Pinus. When Douglas ventured into the Willamette Valley of Oregon during his explorations of the Northwest with the Hudson’s Bay Company, he eventually traveled far enough south to encounter these giants. Muir, perhaps the most famous of naturalists in California would later consider it as the “king of the conifers.”

Those Douglas Firs, among the most common of trees in the West, bear Douglas’s name, along with hundreds of other flora and fauna he first described. The etymology of plant and animal names world wide is one big weaving romp through a lot of dead white dudes, but Douglas as an actual explorer certainly stands out as one of the most interesting in the West. He endured real hardship in finding new plants for the Royal Horticultural Society, introducing over 240 new plants to England for cultivation and science. Jack Nisbet’s book The Collector is a fascinating account of David Douglas’s life, particularly if you are from Washington or Oregon.

During one of my foiled attempts at work last week, I was only a mile and a half from camp and decided that instead of hitching a ride with my partner, that I’d just walk back overland. I had a GPS with me, in case I got lost, but I was fairly confident I should have no trouble. As I slipped, tripped, and slogged my way back, I was constantly reminded of the hard work of early pioneers and explorers. Walking overland blindly isn’t an easy proposition, even with all my modern accessories and some knowledge of the land before me. Out of laziness, I didn’t put on my waterproof jacket or pants and wound up soaked. It took me an hour to make the hike, with several stream crossings, a 1000 ft down climb with a follow up 600 ft scramble. The whole time I was jumping logs, pushing through trees and brush laden with the morning’s rain. It wasn’t a simple stroll.

A dryer and a drawer bursting with clean, dry clothes was waiting for me. Early collectors, prospectors, fur trappers, and settlers had none of this. No fully waterproof coats (beyond oiled cloth), their clothes were mostly cotton and wool, and were often walking relatively blindly ahead even with the help of guides and friendly tribes. Unlike native peoples, they were often ignorant of how to survive off the land beyond hunting. In short, they were always on their toes. They traveled by horseback, wagon, and boat, so when mountains loomed ahead or large rivers weaved nearby they had to very careful about what routes they chose. I just look at a map and drive through land that must have been horribly daunting to travel, even 100 years ago. The Sierras are still indomitable mountains no matter how you look at them.

In California, European exploration began much earlier than the late 18^th century when the first major explorations in the Northwest happened. Spanish and Russian exploration in the mid 18^th century included members, mostly botanists, that were keen on the natural world. However, almost all of this was restricted to coastal regions and adjoining tributaries. No European or American travelers with even the briefest of training as a naturalist had breached the Sierras until 1844, only six years before California achieved statehood. The communities of the Northern Sierras, where I currently reside, were first settled by people of European descent during the time of the 1849 California Goldrush. Fourty-niners rushed into the region, founding the town where I live, Meadow Valley, in 1850. Before that the only people living in the region were Maidu Native Americans, residing in summer villages in Big Meadows (even they wouldn’t stay the winter), which is now Lake Almanor, a man made reservoir. Mt. Lassen, a reminder of the boundary between the volcanic Cascade range and the inert granite of the Sierras watches over from the North.

What I’m getting at in all this discussion of history, seemingly unrelated to birds and nature, is a two fold message; that we have haven’t lived this way all that long. Even a place so seemingly grooved out by humans as California hasn’t even been this way for 200 years. Its a reminder that the world still has unknowns, unexplored areas. We don’t know everything – how could we?

Equally I reminisce on how living used to be. I wouldn’t last a week alone in the wilderness in the Sierras and neither would most Americans. People 150 years ago did passably well (with the exception of the Donner Party), with skills that most of us have tossed by the wayside because our practical use for them is nil. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my modern comforts, but it’s easy to forget as society persists, that we’re still privy to the elements and should know how to survive without electricity if need be! Not too long ago, Americans had to cooperate much more fully with nature to survive. In more ways than we likely know, we should still be paying more attention to how we with coexist with the world around us. Of all the things that scare me about being a contemporary human is that we are so easily blinded as to what our actions really mean when they can be so far reaching.

Yet, when I stand under that Sugar Pine or look down the Feather River, I still can’t help but marvel at how recently human history here happened, even the native people are relative newcomers. I don’t furrow my brow, languish in worry about the world, I just take in the chlorophyl bath and enjoy. If you don’t know how to enjoy it, then how can you save it?

KL, Kuala Lumpur, Selamat Datang

Posted in Birding, Birds, Conservation, Current Events, Environmentalism, Malaysia, Museums, Natural History, Science, Southeast Asia on March 2, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

As the self-aggrandized old hand of the Southeast Asian urban landscape, you’ll peer about joyfully bewildered. You aren’t enveloped by partially peeled cement walls and blackened exhaust. Writhing, verdant walls of vegetation veil cyclone fences and railings. The scene outside the window of your cab is not metropolitan.

I was snatched away from my dreamy chlorophyll bath when we rounded a corner, facing a snarling highway of sluggish traffic. With the precipitation, it could have been Seattle, except the familiarity of my shirt with my back was one step away from gene-splicing, even with the AC full tilt. Kuala Lumpur, is surprisingly green (in the sense of trees), some comforts persist, but you’ll still get drenched in the sweat and rain you’d expect in tropical Asia. I’m a fan of KL.

Malaysia, specifically the area now called Peninsular or West Malaysia, has done well fiscally. I had inklings based on the expansive greenbelts and ornate buildings, but I didn’t know as much of the story till I visited the wonderful Muzium Negara, the National Museum. After all, I needed to fill the stunning void my public high school education left me with concerning Southeast Asian history, (to be fair, I blame standardized curriculum not teachers). The region, under various powers, has been on the trading route between the East and the West as long as they’ve been trading. Monsoonal winds are efficient means of pushing a ship across oceans and Malaysia often became a stopover for traders waiting for favorable breezes. With massive forests, spices, and tin, the land had much to offer and was mentioned in writing as far away as Greece and as early as the beginning of the 15^th century, obviously on the trading route long before that. Ever since the 2^nd century, the Chinese has visited the West coast of the region.

The Kingdom of Melaka, founded in the early 15^th century, a soon to be Muslim sultanate, held sway over many resources that the West found covetous. In turn the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British invaded and had their way with the Tin and spices they were after. Through various deals and typical colonial dishonesty, the British found themselves in control of a modern Malaysia. Eventually they created a governed area out of the Peninsular region (which was never one country), and land snatches they made from a flailing Brunei and Sulu (a Sultanate you’ve probably never heard of) in Northern Borneo. I’d recently been wondering how Northern Borneo was Malaysian and now I knew. By 1957 a massive front of multicultural self-awareness had built throughout the states and without too much fuss, Malaysia found independence. The history of this area is absurdly fascinating, I can’t wait to learn more.

Human history puts natural history into perspective (which is why I spend time on it). Malaysia seems to me the most progressive country I’ve visited when it comes to many things, including the environment. They’ve been around the block, seen what can happen when a greedy hand is at the wheel. In all appearances though, the consensus that what’s left is pretty sacred. Thanks to people like me who visit to see nature (on planes, automobiles, using disposable plastics), there is an easily distinguished fiscal reason for preservation. As much as I may agree with other arguments for the necessity of biodiversity, this is a little less esoteric to the general public.

In Kepong, a train and a taxi outside Kuala Lumpur, is the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FIRM). This giant complex of recreational land, educational, and research facilities is a bit of a tourist draw, yet until we found the fantastic museum and coerced someone to let us in, it was difficult to say what exactly brought people here. Sure there was steamy tropical forest, which actually housed many new things for Nick, Ellen, and I. Yet the canopy walkway was closed (something mentioned after we’d paid admission), and the information booth just showed us a path to walk down. Surely people weren’t paying 10 ringgit just to prance about regenerating tropical jungles? We did see a Diard’s Trogon (Harpactes diardii), Spectacled Bulbuls (Pycnonotus erythropthalmos), and a Flying Lizard, all well worth it.

Yet I wanted to know more about this place, what sort of mad scientist experiments were going on in the pulp lab? Alas, by the time a sheepish young man appeared from his four hour lunch break to let us into a informative museum, we only had 15 minutes to eyeball the endless plaques on all forestry research before our Taxi was due. Ellen and I were massively disappointed because learning what Malaysia was doing with their forests was impetus for visiting. Equally frustrating was that I didn’t manage to corner any scientists to beat some interviews out of.

What I saw I couldn’t help admire, here was shameless, proud declarations of what the forest was being used for. I could see foresight and no shame in the use of a strong resource which could be managed sustainably. Growing up a city liberal, it is easy to form the opinion that cutting trees is an irretrievable sin, whilst reading your book, relaxing in a wooden recliner. People aren’t going anywhere just yet and while destruction is destruction, unless all people blink out, creating less invasive and smarter means of extraction and application are obvious.

Yet, Malaysia is the second largest producer of Palm Oil in the world. Palm Oil is the sinister product in so much we use and you don’t grow this bulbous, cancerous looking fruit by sprinkling seeds in the rainforest understory. For comparisons sake, Indonesia is the number one producer and the exhaust from their land clearing makes them the 4^th worst producer of green house gasses behind the EU, the USA, and China.

A report from Wetlands International this year, suggests that between 2005 and 2010, almost 353,000 hectares of peat swamp forest were cleared in Malaysia. This is a painful third of the existing habitat, one of the most diverse in Borneo. To visualize one hectare, think of the footprint the entire Statue of Liberty takes up. Environmental integrity is hard won when there’s money to be had and a demanding and thirsty Western world guzzling your product as quickly as you can make more. Finger pointing doesn’t work here, US demand is this issue. All this makes me want to curl of up in the fetal position, but it is the reality of an aspiring environmental journalist.

As I strolled around the Lake Gardens back in Kuala Lumpur, I continued to mull over what it meant to have grand public parks in the middle of the city. This was a luxury born of elevated means, likely ill begotten resources. I found their expanse inviting and comfortable, but was this coming at a cost? (An alternative of course is being a place like Laos, which is still getting torn apart and the people get no kick back). Black-naped Orioles (Oriolus chinensis) chortled overhead. Long-tailed Macaques (Macaca fascicularis) did what any respectable troop does in proximity to humans, they dined lavishly, in hedonistic revels, on garbage. The pleasant report of the grand mosque sounded in the distance. I couldn’t help but feel as if people were being lulled into a false sense environmental security, with green space and government campaigns on sustainability. I worry about the same at home sometimes.

But the sun was shining, the Milky Storks (Mycteria cinerea) were clattering away, and Blue-throated Bee-eaters (Merops vividis) sped from their perches in search of Hymenoptera. It was nice to be somewhere with such evident pride in self and country, even if it was somewhat hypocritical at times. I passed people from all over the world, resident or otherwise, as I walked back to my grimy China Town guest house. Long-billed Crows (Corvus validus) drifted off to their roosts for the night, reminding me of crows in Seattle. I really like Malaysia.

I promise I’ll get off my soapbox next time but a guy’s gotta vent sometimes. Next? Borneo!!!

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Interview: Ben Winger – On Expeditions and the Importance of Museum Collections

Posted in Birds, Collecting, Conservation, Environmentalism, Field Work, Museums, Science on November 10, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

I interviewed Ben, a fellow bird nerd and real deal Ornithologist, this fall about exciting expeditions he’s taken in the name of science. Enjoy!

Ben Winger is a graduate student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago and the Division of Birds of the Field Museum of Natural History. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell in 2007 and in 2008 embarked on an ornithological expedition to a poorly known region of Peru with two of his undergraduate colleagues (read more about this 2008 trip here). In 2010, after finishing his first year of graduate school, he visited a different area of Peru on an expedition with colleagues from the Field Museum Division of Birds and the Centro de Ornitologia y Biodiversidad in Lima.

Brendan McGarry: Tell me a little about your research interests and how they tie into your recent trip.

Ben Winger: Broadly, I am interested in the speciation of birds, as well as how their geographic ranges have evolved through time. I am currently beginning a project that I hope will provide insight into the formation of the incredible diversity of birds found in the Andes, as well how speciation in birds occurs more generally. On this trip in 2010, we set out to northern Peru to collect genetic samples for this and other projects related to bird speciation in South America. The trip was also focused on collecting specimens that will be useful for other researchers in the future.

BM: Does your research mainly consist of collecting or banding or conducting observational transects. What is the makeup of your data collection? How did this most recent expedition compare to your previous trip in 2008? How would a typical day of work go in each trip?

BW: On the 2008 Cornell trip to Peru, our time was split between conducting species inventories through observational transects (i.e., birding or point-counts), mist-netting and audio-recording, and collecting a small number of voucher specimens that represented the most important new records for the area. A typical day would involve audio-recording in the dawn and dusk hours, observational surveys in the morning, and mist-netting throughout the day. In the slow part of the afternoon we prepared specimens if any had been collected, and made sure that our observations and audio-recordings were thoroughly logged in our notebooks.

On the 2010 trip, we were focused more on specimen collection, but I also did some audio-recording for the Macaulay Library at Cornell and our observations will be entered into eBird as well. During collection-focused trips like this, obtaining and preparing specimens is a full-time task. Much more time is spent huddled in camp preparing the specimens and diligently keeping an eye on the collection to make sure it is not damaged by insects or humidity. A significant amount of time is also spent keeping track of what we have collected and making decisions about which species and individuals to collect, so that we do not collect too many individuals of any species. These decisions involve adhering to the terms of our government-issued permits, but equally important they involve calling on knowledge about the rarity or conservation status of certain species and the representation that a species may or may not have in museum collections worldwide. Finally, we also spend time collecting the endo- and ecto-parasites on each specimen, as well as samples of pathogens like avian malaria and flu, to further knowledge of host-parasite evolution and avian diseases.

The difference between these two trips is that in 2008, the goal was to conduct the first avian inventory of a very remote region. Ornithologists had never visited this area, the Gran Pajonal of Peru, so we were gathering baseline data on the presence and absence of bird species. It was important that we covered as much ground as we could and surveyed as many different habitats as possible, so we spent less time collecting specimens and more time making observations. In 2010 we were working in an area that was relatively better known ornithologically, but still not nearly as well known as any location in North America. For example, very few tissue samples for DNA studies had been collected in this area, and the lower elevation cloud forest had scarcely been visited by ornithologists since the early 1900s. The focus of the 2010 trip was on collecting samples that will be useful for a myriad of studies on avian evolution and ecology, as well as increasing knowledge of the distribution of Andean birds, rather than documenting all the species in a particular region as I did in 2008. There were many similarities between both trips, however: both were in remote regions of the Andes that required several days of trekking to access, and both relied on support staff from local communities to help construct camps, cut trails and guide the teams through the mountainous jungle.

BM: Your interests are deeply rooted in biogeography, what sort of expectations do you have for your future research? Do you foresee conservation benefits or simply broadening our knowledge base on speciation, biogeography, and spatial movements? Admittedly these areas of research often do directly benefit conservation.

BW: I hope that my research will contribute to our understanding of how the astounding avian diversity we see throughout the world has evolved. Furthermore, the specimens we collect and the data we gather are not only useful for research projects like mine that are currently ongoing, but the material is available, archived in museums and databases, for any researcher or conservation worker in the future. Although it may not be superficially obvious, this type of research, and specimen collection in general, does have an influence on conservation. For example, there are many highly endemic species in the world that are actually fairly difficult to distinguish from more common, widespread species. Without the efforts of museum workers, many of these forms would go unnoticed, undescribed and, consequently, unprotected. Our understanding of global biodiversity, even in a group of animals as well known as birds, is still far from complete. Therefore, the continued collection of baseline data on the existence of and variation within species in the form of specimen collections is an invaluable aspect of documenting and protecting life on earth. It may appear ironic that collecting birds can benefit their conservation, but the very small numbers of birds that are collected each year for scientific purposes do not have an impact on the long-term health of populations. Rather, responsible collecting increases our knowledge of the biodiversity we are trying to protect and helps to inform conservation priorities.

BM: I’m fairly certain both you and I are convinced that museum collecting is vital for a historical knowledge of literally every area of natural history. However, what would your explanation of the importance be to someone unconvinced, particularly pertaining to you own work? Could your and others’ research be conducted without current collection efforts? Some people have questions about the necessity of banding birds, let alone something like shooting birds that they’d possibly consider archaic.

BW: As technology improves, we are increasingly able to do more and more without collecting specimens: DNA can be sequenced from blood or feather samples instead of muscle tissue; plumage variation can be captured with a photograph; audio recordings can be used to document the presence of a species in a reserve. These practices are all valuable, positive advancements. They allow scientists to study the genetics of highly endangered species that could be imperiled by collecting, birders to document rarities or even make taxonomic discoveries, and ornithologists to survey nature reserves where collecting is not permitted. However, these technological improvements do not cast collecting into the dark ages. Rather, they emphasize the amount of invaluable information that can be obtained from a single specimen (skin, skeleton, fluid, spreadwing) that is catalogued in the public domain with associated data (geographical information, tissue samples, stomach contents, pathogens, parasites, and vocal recordings to name a few examples). Photographs can deceive through distortion of light or post-processing, and blood samples collected by scientists without a voucher specimen do not need to be archived in a collection, and thus are not always available for future scientific research beyond the initial purpose of the investigator. A specimen on the other hand, properly cared for and made accessible in a museum collection, will continue to benefit future inquiry in ways we cannot yet imagine. The specimen and the natural history collection have as much, if not more, value in science and society than they ever have. Particularly as each day habitats and the species therein are disappearing faster than we can protect them and as we discover new and innovative things that we can learn from specimens, I believe that obtaining a record of life on earth in the form of museum collections is a worthwhile human endeavor and one that is vitally important in 2010.

BM: Living in a remote field location is hard enough in a temperate climate; what are the major challenges to your health and productivity in the tropics?

BW: The tropics are a challenging but extremely rewarding place to work. Parasites, digestive tract infections, monotonous field food, biting insects and other dangerous creatures, and the constant possibility for political unrest in the host country are par for the course. Tropical expeditions also tend to involve long, difficult overland hikes through degraded habitat to access pristine forest, or an inordinate amount of time sitting in uncomfortable river boats, and of course lots of time spent in damp clothes and molding sleeping bags. For me, the psychological and emotional challenges of missing loved ones back home is always harder to deal with than the physical, bacterial or climatic difficulties which, in retrospect, seem like mere nuisances. However, the sense of discovery that only comes in the tropics, and the possibility to explore and work in remote, untrammeled places where few have ever set foot makes it all worth it.

BM: When you aren’t out in the field, what are you spending your time on? When are you headed back next?

BW: These days I’m in Chicago designing a plan for my PhD thesis, and getting started in the molecular laboratory at the Field Museum. I will defend my dissertation proposal to my PhD committee in the spring, and I have plans to get back into the field in the summer of 2011. I try to go birding on the Chicago lakefront as much as time allows (documenting my sightings in eBird, of course!), as it is a fantastic place to witness the spectacle of bird migration. I should mention that we do not collect birds in the Chicago area, but every day during migration hundreds of birds are killed when they collide with skyscrapers and other buildings. These birds are picked up by a team of volunteers that scours the downtown area every morning during migration. Birds that are still alive are brought to an animal rehab center, and those that have died are brought to the Field Museum, where they prepared as skins or skeletons. The collection that the Field Museum has maintained of thousands of these “tower-kill” birds has not only increased our knowledge of migration patterns in the Chicago area, but it has been crucial in the documentation of the tremendous avian mortality caused by skyscrapers. Data from this collection has been an important factor in convincing building owners around Chicago to turn out their lights at night to help reduce bird mortality. Read more about it here.

Thanks Ben – we’ll all look forward to hearing more from you in the future!

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The Museums Pt. II

Posted in Birds, Collecting, Conservation, Environmentalism, Field Work, Museums, Natural History, Science on October 19, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

An ornithological collection is not a bunch of stuffed birds. Devoid of 15-some data points, dutifully transcribed on individualized tags, they would be merely wonders of preservation. Every bird has a unique number, date of collection, a preparer, a locale, standard name (Latin name), and the list extends the more recent the specimen. From a locale you can extrapolate historical species distributions. The preparer can add clue to a historical record. The bird itself combed with tantamount outcomes.

To be fair, skins are not good for one thing; looking at size and shape. One of the unfortunate sides of preparation, not matter how skilled and careful the preparer is – a bird will not retain original shape. Think of a sock being filled with something other than a foot, it can be radically misshapen. Plumage, molt, coloration all can be duly noted but discussions of size or shape in a skin is off limits – poorly shaped skins border on comical or bizzare. Luckily skeletons are kept and collected to record size. Thankfully, wing spreads also largely retain their original conformation.

The Burke has over 100,000 birds and about 3,400 species represented. Location in mind, they have an obvious bias towards Western North America and Northern Pacific Seabirds. The most important species are from expeditions in Northern Russia that have been conducted for 12 years and from 15 years in the Solomon Islands. These represent a highly significant body of data, likely the only on bird populations in those areas. One could travel there, conduct point counts, mist net birds, and come away with data as well but field work relies on a preexisting question.

Field investigations, conducted in years to come, cannot be predicted. If someone is curious about the parasite load of Rufous Hummingbirds from the 1980s compared to the 2000′s (just a hypothetical), there’s a good chance a natural history museum would have data to help answer that question. Even a meticulous banding operation wouldn’t reveal a holistic data.

A specific case that showing the necessity of skins comes in the form of stable isotope analysis. This process takes into account the different isotopes of common elements and revealing secrets of animals lives. Isotopes can be mapped to different regions of the globe, different foods, etc. being unique to those locales or foods. Mindful analysis can help one determine the trophic level of various seabirds (basically what they are eating) or help distinguish between migratory and resident populations of Canada geese.

While collectors covet the specimens they seek out, there few who relish the act of collection. Excitement over the chase, the hunt, the exhausting and harsh work of locating specific quarry, yes. However, barring the few, killing is merely the unfortunate part of collecting. They honor the specimen through hard work to preserve it possibly for centuries to come. A few individuals shot, memorialized and useful for tantamount, for as long as they are properly cared for. Surely the objectors can oblige that? There is no massacre, a trip has a small list of birds, they seek them out and take their quota. Negligible when you take into account disease, predation, and all the trappings of modern human impact – large buildings, cars, domestic pets, and habitat destruction. In some cases we even immortalize birds we’ve ushered out of existence (birds like the Carolina Parakeet, which, if someone alive saw them in the wild, would be over 106 years old). To be fair, there is strong evidence that a flurry of specimen grabbing of the quickly disappearing Ivory-billed Woodpecker helped its demise. Alas not every person will deny covetous greed, especially when money or prestige is involved.

Birds are the most widespread and diverse vertebrates on the planet. They’ve flourished in every feasible locale. Even in the advent of fancy cameras, concentrated efforts to collect date unobtrusively, to develop hands off approaches, there are simply some birds we cannot keep proper tabs on. Albatrosses are a prime example, spending most of their lives roaming the pelagic waters, only occasionally breeding on logistically inaccessible islands. It makes sense that their molt strategies are complicated because they can’t molt the way many birds would or they’d lose their ability to efficiently harness air currents. Albatross molt is so complicated that I will admit I know little and don’t intend to delve any deeper for this piece. However, even the briefest of comprehension of molt strategies in these long living, low fecundity species, breeding on isolated, vulnerable island gives their conservation a step up. Feathers being a defining characteristic of birds, dictate a lot in their lives. Naked apes will do well to continue to master molt.

With brevity in mind, this is where the discussion ends. Possible this wasn’t convincing and you find shooting birds cruel and museums barbaric. The hope is that you’ve seen the light and realized that how we understand populations, natural history, and biodiversity can be augmented by invaluable museum collections. Simply, if we don’t know the birds, how can we expect to save them?

Please give me your thoughts negative or otherwise and check out the rest of the photos I took.

(Thanks is due to Rob Faucett for allowing me access to the collections)

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The Museum

Posted in Birds, Collecting, Museums, Natural History, Science, Seattle, Washington on September 28, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

The landscape of presentation, the selective facts that drive inquisition, and the visual stimulus, combine in the best cases for endless learning. It can be overwhelming, for it’s easy to walk away with the impression of comprehending little and feeling exhausted for it. People blame that feeling on standing on marble floors for hours on end. A fairer attribution would be to the revelations untangling in the carriage of their mind.

Museums, from the Greek Mouseion, were the place of the muses, the patrons of art. This congers inspiration – of imagination, of knowledge. Indeed we are lucky to have such tomes all over this world. Places were we celebrate, mourn, and most importantly understand art, history, and science. They used to be institutions of the wealthy, collections that humored, satisfied the required gentlemanly hobby. The enlightenment brought museums into the public eye in the 18th century. It is a fair venture that we should be indebted to those who took the time to catalog the treasures we find within.

There are many benefits to having them. Beyond education of a general public, they also serve to maintain our necessity for comprehension. The paramount of an museum is not what you see in the display cases, the rotating and permanent exhibits. Behind the scenes is where the real magic and importance lies.

All share a meticulous and delicate process of cataloging and preserving everything them have. Every single item in a museum, natural history or otherwise, is priceless and irreplaceable. After all, no two items will be under the exact same environmental stresses. Just because you can go out and “get” another American Robin doesn’t mean it will hold the same information as another American Robin, even one born the same year and hatched nearby. And better yet, having two birds or rather two data points is infinitely better than one. The same can be said of pennies minted in 1972 or a Peruvian blankets woven in 1775.

Being largely a blog about birds, science, and natural history, it is only appropriate to focus on a natural history museum in this discussion. Happily Seattle is blessed to have an extremely good one, housed on the University of Washington, the Thomas Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. These subjects might not seem relevant, however with only a little imagination comes a realization that human history is essentially a segment of natural history. Even if we behave as if we aren’t part of the cycle, a part of nature, doesn’t mean we really are after all.

Natural History Museums can range in size from places like the Smithsonian or the Chicago Field Museum to small private collections like the Murie Museum of the Teton Science School in Jackson, Wyoming. Collections are amassed by, well, by collecting. People find specimens in the field by happenstance or search them out purposefully, both depend on being an expert. It only makes sense that in looking for a certain subspecies of Savannah Sparrow, that you know what to look for before you shoot. Now-a-days, only experts are allowed, by permit to collect or posses almost any native bird in the United States (in other words, don’t get inspired to go out and collect bird feathers after reading this – per the Migratory Bird Act). And yes, there’s that gun thing. We’ll get to that later.

The Burke Museum was founded in 1885 by members of the University of Washington’s Young Naturalists Society. They erected a building of their own volition recognizing the need to properly house an increasing population of artifacts (unless something drastic happens, an active museum is always likely to grow, even burst at the seams). In 1899 it was deemed a state museum and in 1962 it received the current name, after a bequest after Judge Thomas Burke.

The museum itself is a lumbering, boxy building. It isn’t particularly eye catching or a testament to architecture. However that is not the point or intention. Efficiency of space is paramount – those collections from Native American artifacts to the Ornithology holdings – they need proper space, ventilation, and treatments – you can’t just pile things in a box and call it good.

On display are all the trappings of a typical array of showcases. To keep people interested in a world of media, there are the typical flashing lights, videos, and interactive pieces but upon entering, there is a long glass case filled with a sampling of all the Burke has to offer. Even after you’ve perused everything, you quickly realize there is a lot more in the building than the public space.

The ornithology collections at the Burke count among one of the largest in the country. Not only are there bird skins but they hold soft tissue samples (the second largest collection in the world), skeletons, and eggs from the world’s avian diversity. Thanks to their pioneering work, the Burke got an early start on the practice of creating spread wings from their specimens. As a result they have the largest and likely fastest growing collection of spread wings, a valuable thing indeed. Once a bird has been dead awhile, rigor mortis sets in and you can no longer make a puppet of it, spreading wings or flexing feet. To allow for study of things like molt in a bird’s wings (the most complicated and interesting area of study in molt), a wing is amputated, spread properly, and let to dry.

The mammalogy and ornithology departments share a prep room where they do the surprisingly clean job of preparing study skins. Collection expeditions can’t wait around, so they are done in the field but the museum takes window kills, the bird your cat caught, local collections, or birds someone found on the beach. Bird preparation is a delicate process and although almost anyone can learn it, only someone with much experience will produce perfect skins. However, they also scrub skeletons the Dermestid beetles colony hasn’t fully picked clean, (any respectable museum has a colony of these beetles to clean bones of any ligament or hide) and take tissue samples here.

So museums exist, they are meticulous storehouses of historical information, and some are natural history museums. But haven’t we moved beyond shooting birds? We’ve binoculars, spotting scopes, cameras, video, all at our disposal. John James Audubon and other naturalists of his time had no choice if they wanted to really understand the species they studied because these advanced optics weren’t available. Is it really necessary now?