An Ostentatious Drag
A look into the Wesleyan Bird Collections
Indian Peafowl
Pavo cristatus Linneaus 1758
Peafowl are a group of three species in the pheasant family. Though commonly referred to as peacocks, that term technically refers to just the males. Two of the species, Pavo cristatus and Pavo muticus, are from Asia, while Afropavo congensis resides in Africa. Peacocks are best known for their beautiful plumage, which is theorized to be a product of sexual selection. Females prefer males with the largest and most vibrant feathers.
“The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” — Charles Darwin
The Wesleyan Natural History Collections have their very own peacock specimen, which was given as a gift by Mr. and Ms. Pelton, owners of a former print shop and pharmacy on Main Street in Middletown. Beyond that, the origin of this specimen is unknown. It now resides on exhibit at the entrance to the science library.
Unfortunately, our peacock’s feathers are dulled because they were covered in dust from the coal that powered the heating in Wesleyan’s former museum in Judd Hall. When the specimen was undergoing restoration its feathers were carefully cleaned, removing as much of the dust as possible. However, time and neglect have taken their toll, and the feathers are extremely fragile and prone to fall to fragments.
There are lots of bugs who would love to snack on a taxidermied bird, so in the past taxidermists would treat their specimens with arsenic. We believe that all the specimens that Wesleyan owns have arsenic and asbestos in them, so they require careful handling.
“Arsenic is the best substance that can be used in preserving skins, and the only one necessary… there is probably not so much danger attending the use of pure dry arsenic as people generally suppose… that the small quantity taken, either by inhalation while using it or by numerous other accidental ways, would be beneficial, rather than injurious.” — C. J Maynard in The Naturalist's Guide (1873) (To be clear, not such a good idea).
We have recently added some peacock feathers on display with our specimen, to showcase their beauty. These feathers were donated from the farm of Biology Professor Stephen Devoto and Professor of the Practice Joyce Powzyk. To be sure they carried none of the insect parasites common to the feathers of all living birds, we fumigated these feathers with CO2 by isolating them in dry ice for a period of time.
Wesleyan's Birds
Our peacock is only one of roughly 300 bird specimens in the natural history collections. When Wesleyan’s old natural history museum closed in 1957, specimens were strewn all over, some stuffed in closets and other attics, others being sent to the Yale Peabody Museum or even the Smithsonian. In the 1930s, many of the birds had already been moved to display cases on the second floor of Shanklin to relieve crowding in the museum. Starting in 2017, we’ve been hard at work resurrecting, cataloging, and displaying the Wesleyan collections once again!
Over the course of the 18th century, ornithology began to develop as a discipline. Many ornithologists wanted to display their specimens, so taxidermying birds became popular. At the same time, feathers were becoming more prized in fashion, so through the actions of avid collectors and commercial enterprises, many bird species in the US were threatened.
After the American Ornithologist Union was formed in 1883, there was a crackdown on excessive bird hunting for specimens. A couple of decades later, the federal government began enacting bird protection laws. Unfortunately, it was too late for some species, such as the passenger pigeon. Furthermore, there was an argument from some collectors for killing even more birds from threatened species, so that the stuffed specimens would live on after the living ones were gone.
Taxidermied birds were a particularly important part of natural history museums. Many early museums relied on dioramas to showcase animals in something like their natural habitats, and birds were a vital part of those displays.
← A diorama from the American Museum of Natural History
The Wesleyan Natural History Collections contain many beautiful bird specimens
And some that are... a little more unique (in disrepair)
Restoration
As we were going through the process of rediscovering Wesleyan’s birds, it was clear that many of them needed fixing up. It was quite a daunting endeavor, but we were lucky enough to have the help of Michael Anderson, the exhibit preparator at Yale’s Peabody Museum. He used his expertise to do everything from reattaching wings on sparrows, to adding eroded eyelids on ducks.
Now our chief task is cataloging and labeling our birds. We’re using the relational database Specify7 as a repository for all the information we have on each specimen, and will soon use that information to make standardized labels for all of them. This database will make our collections available to the global community of scientists.
