Visitors to the University’s Museum of Natural Science are greeted by stripes … but they’re not purple and gold. These stripes – colored black and white – belong to the museum’s stuffed zebra.
Located behind Middleton Library in historic Foster Hall, the museum features many animal specimens – including a stuffed Alaskan grizzly and the original mascot, Mike I – as well as interactive displays and exhibits highlighting Louisiana’s American Indians.
Visitors who wind their way through the dioramas to the back of the museum will find themselves engulfed in one of the museum’s most breathtaking features: the bird collection.
From the wispy, mottled-white feathers of the Snowy Owl to the coal-black American Crow, the display positions birds perched on both sides of and even “flying” above visitors.
But those specimens on display, said collection manager Steven Cardiff, are only “the tip of the iceberg.”
Not only serving as a resource for interested visitors, Foster Hall houses a vast collection of scientific specimens used for research. According to the museum’s Web site, there are nearly 3 million specimens divided among eight collections.
The ornithological collection, which is approaching 180,000 specimens, features bird skins, skeletons, fluid-preserved specimens, stomach-content samples and recordings of bird songs.
Cardiff said the collection is one of the largest among university collections in the United States. Though it is not the biggest, many of the larger collections feature older specimens that, while valuable, don’t offer as much data for research.
“The ones we have here are a lot more recent, so there’s a lot more information per specimen,” Cardiff said.
Justin Bosler, biology senior, works at the museum.
“I’m extracting label data from the specimens of Louisiana,” he said.
Label data includes information like body weight, sex, fat levels and stomach contents.
This data will be used for an upcoming book by Cardiff and J. V. Remsen, professor and the museum’s bird curator.
The book, which will likely feature two editions – one for land birds and one for water birds – will catalogue the species of birds living in Louisiana.
Bosler said the land birds edition is scheduled for publication by the end of fall.
—-Contact Daniel McBride at [email protected]