Visiting the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, CA

On Tuesday, December 19, 2006, Susan Barnes and I had a private tour of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, CA. Susan's boss knows the curator and she led us around the bird section. The museum is not open to the public except for one day in April each year. It is actually not a museum but a research facility. So this was a very special treat. I provided the curator, Carla, with a list of birds I wanted to see and she had some ideas of her own of what might be interesting. I guess she is used to leading a lot of children and non-birders who mostly want to see colorful birds with long tails because that is what she wanted to show me. When we first entered the museum we saw a Wandering Albatross on top of the file cabinets. It was enormous and we could examine the bill in intricate detail. The rest of the birds are in huge file cabinets in wooden drawers that Carla had to reach up and take out. I know her shoulders must have been sore after all that pulling and reaching. She first showed us a drawer of tanagers from all over the world; they were very colorful and impressive. Next she pulled out a drawer full of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. She let me touch one of them and she brought out a Pileated Woodpecker to put beside the Ivory-billed to show the size difference. It stopped my heart to see a whole tray of an extinct bird. In addition to stuffed birds the museum also houses bird eggs, nests, and skins. She showed us some huge bird eggs-- one from an Elephant Bird that was about three feet in diameter and some emerald green eggs that looked polished. I asked to see a Nutting's Flycatcher and Carla begrudgingly pulled the drawer out and then said it was not very interesting. She would barely even let me look at it. Then she reluctantly pulled out a drawer of Hammond's Flycatchers that she also thought was boring. I said it was interesting to me. I wanted to look at one up close. The bills on all the Hammond's appeared very dark and I was intersted in that because earlier this year I found a juvenile Hammond's Flycatcher in San Francisco that had an all pale lower mandible. Although they are common in the mountains, Hammond's Flycatchers are rare in San Francisco County.
Next Carla pulled out a drawer full of multi-colored hummingbirds. I could not get over how tiny they were. Then Carla pulled out a drawer that could only hold two birds because they were two more Albatrosses, one a Short-tailed Albatross probably as close as I'll ever get to this nearly extinct bird. In addition to birds the museum houses other vertebrates including thousands of mammals. Before we left Carla took us down to the little shop of horrors where the bettles pick the bones clean. There were gruesome carcasses in various states of decomposition lying about and inside a tank bettles were working away on some poor critter.
What a privilege to be allowed a glimpse of this facility. Now I know how Sibley and Audubon were able to paint some of the rarer birds with such exquisite detail.