Ornithological Collections at Auckland Museum

Prepared by a taxidermist, these specimens are for display in our galleries. With glass eyes and posed in a life like position, they show many of the characteristics of a live animal.

Study skins represent over a quarter of the Land Vertebrate Collection at Auckland Museum. The skins display many of the physical characteristics of the live animal, just like a mounted specimen in a public gallery, however there are no glass eyes and the animal is not posed in a life-like position. Study skins enable measurements to be taken of external features like feathers, wings, feet and beaks. They can also provide material such as toe pads for DNA samples and feathers for isotope research. It is important to try to collect a range of specimens from each species to help show change and variation over time and geography. If researchers have a question about how a bird looks on the outside then a study skin is a good place to start – for example, birds can see ultraviolet light so Auckland Museum’s bird study skins have been scanned to see if there are differences between males and females in ultraviolet patterns of the plumage.

Most of New Zealand’s known land vertebrate fossil record consists of sub-fossils. Sub–fossils are parts of animals that are not yet fully fossilised like dinosaur remains are. The majority of these date from the Holocene epoch (up to 12,000 years old) and a well-known New Zealand example is the extinct flightless giant moa. There were nine species of moa throughout the country, but the sub-fossil remains of bones and eggshells provide a reasonable record of their distribution and, once carbon dated, can tell us the time period they were in use by their owner. Sub-fossils can often contain enough DNA to be analysed and so reveal a lot of information about creatures no longer present today. Sub-fossils also help with comparisons between similar species and add to our understanding of animal biodiversity prior to human arrival.

A majority of the bird eggs at Auckland Museum come from historical private collections and cover most species from New Zealand. Small holes are carefully made in them and the contents are blown out followed by a period of time to dry. Often egg colour and size can help to identify the species that produced it. Having many eggs from different individuals of the same species can help with information about variability with populations. The museum also maintains a small collection of bird nests which show the diversity of style and material used by birds for raising a family. Traditionally, nests are only collected in small numbers to represent species rather than having multiple specimens from a species as for the study skins and skeletons.

The purpose of feather sheets is to show individual feathers plucked from a single bird. These are mounted on paper sheets like those used for botanical collections. Each feather can be viewed in its entirety, and the standard at Auckland Museum is to display all the feathers from one wing and the whole tail, as well as a sample of body feathers showing variability in colour, size, pattern or shape. This individual detail cannot be seen in study skins as feathers are densely overlapped to create continuous cover, especially important for birds that fly. The feather sheets at Auckland Museum are often used to identify unknown feathers from varied sources like feather cloaks or ornamental wear, nest linings, or those found on a beach. Artists seeking the finer detail of feather structure also use the sheets for inspiration and reference.

Once a study skin specimen of a bird is dried, its wings can no longer be opened. They are fixed. This means the underside of the wing cannot be seen and limits detailed study of the feathers in their natural location. Spread wings are wings that have been disarticulated – separated at the shoulder joint – from the main body, spread out, and dried in place to show the array of colour, pattern and order of the feathers. Wings can contain the greatest diversity of feather type, often having the complement of full primary and secondary flight feathers; greater, lesser and marginal coverts; alula feathers (winglet) and tertiary feathers. As spread wings keep the arrangement of the feathers intact they can also help answer questions about bird moult – a process where birds shed and replace worn feathers.