An Unfortunate Visitor
She arrived at Sprint headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas during the early morning darkness on Tuesday, September 5, 2006. She was exhausted from flying 250 to 300 miles, just one leg on her migratory route from Canada to Central America. She might have been attracted by a large grouping of trees — the 300 acre Sprint facility includes 13,000 of them — or by the pools of water that would become fountains and waterfalls when the pumps switched on at 7:00 AM. Grateful for a resting place, she had only hours to live.
At dawn she found herself surrounded by office buildings, not the anticipated forest. Still tired and confused, she took flight in search of a more suitable area to rest and forage. Mistaking a window for an open space, she sailed into the glass and died on impact.
This scenario was described to me by Mark Blair Robbins, Collections Manager for the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center Division of Ornithology, who I had the privilege and pleasure to visit Friday afternoon, September 8. I might have said his explanation was an educated guess if not for a conversation I had the previous day with an expert birding friend, Mark McKellar, owner of Kansas City’s Backyard Bird Center. When he learned I was to meet Robbins, he said “Fiske, Mark Robbins is not just KU’s Ornithology collection manager, he’s one of the top field ornithologists on the planet.” Oh.
I found the bird lying on the sidewalk Tuesday on my lunch break. Her crisp black and white markings were unfamiliar to me. She was small and beautiful and perfect. On an impulse I picked her up and carried her to my office in the palm of my hand.
Wondering if it might be possible to preserve the bird, I called the Backyard Bird Center. Ruth answered the phone. After explaining that I had found an unusual black and white bird that appeared to have flown into a window Ruth asked me if the bird was small like a house finch. I said yes. Then she wanted to know if it had a solid black cap. When I said no, it has a white stripe down the middle, Ruth told me it was probably a black and white warbler. (And Ruth was right.)
I asked if there were some way to preserve the bird. Ruth said “Fiske, it’s illegal to keep it or transport it across state line.” Really? But I didn’t kill the bird. “No, of course you didn’t. But that’s exactly what a collector would say isn’t it.” Hmmm. She had a point there. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was created to end the commercial trade in wild birds and feathers which had devastated native bird populations. “But,” Ruth said, “a Kansas nature center could legally keep the specimen and would be pleased to have it.”
Ruth told me I should double-bag the bird in ziplock bags and freeze it as soon as possible. Fortunately, I had some ziplock bags on my desk. I didn’t want someone seeing the bird in the freezer in our break room, so I placed it in an empty tea box, and wrapped that in two small shopping bags. It looked innocuous.
A brief web search for Kansas nature centers turned up KU’s Natural History Museum. From the ornithology staff listing I chose the Curator in Charge, Townsend Peterson, and the Collection Manager, Mark Robbins and sent an email explaining I had found a bird that might be a black and white warbler and wondered if they might want it for their collection. I attached a picture of the bird. I had a response from Mark the next morning confirming that Ruth correctly identified the warbler and saying he would be pleased to add it to KU’s collection. We exchanged emails and arranged my visit for Friday.
I arrived at Dyche Hall (pronounced dike) at 1:15 in the afternoon, parking near the student union. The campus was swarming with new students who had hazy notions of building names. One young lady had a campus map, however, and after a few moments of orienteering located the Hall about 150 yards from the parking lot entrance where we stood.
I asked for Mark Robbins at the gift shop (the museum is open to the public). He arrived minutes later with a friendly smile and a quick handshake. We climbed several flights of stairs, passing a roped barricade, to reach the ornithology department on the top floor. We walked past aisle after aisle of tall, metal cabinets. Robbins opened one to show me its contents -- drawers of carefully preserved birds.
He told me KU has one hundred thousand specimens in its ornithological collection, making it one of the four or five largest university collections in the world. Each cabinet costs $2,000 not including the drawers, which cost another $250 each. The cabinets are finished with a treatment that prevents them from out-gassing argon or other chemicals that might harm their contents. The drawers are lined with archival quality, acid-free paper. Temperature and humidity are carefully controlled. Stored under these conditions, specimens can be preserved for thousands of years.
Robbins closed the cabinet, and we walked on to the room where specimens are prepared and examined. A graduate student (from Romania) was cleaning a bird returned from South America. “Many of the birds we receive are preserved as study skins,” Robbins explained. “The internal organs and tissues are removed, and the bodies are stuffed with sterile cotton and possibly a wooden dowel.” The bird the student was working with had been packed in salt for preservation. The salt had to be carefully washed off and the bird dried using compressed air. The student was directing the air stream against his finger to diffuse the airflow, preventing it from dislodging any feathers.
Robbins unwrapped the warbler I had brought and looked it over. He smiled and commented that it really was in excellent condition. He said you can tell it’s a female because males have a black malar marking under their eyes. He put the bird on a balance scale and found that it weighed 10 grams. “Okay,” he said, using a voice countless graduate students have heard time and again, “This warbler would weigh about 14-15 grams, normally. It’s weight is down because it has burned a lot of calories flying from the northern United States or Canada, probably 250 to 300 miles.” He spread back the feathers on the bird’s breast. “There should be a yellow fat pouch here. It is missing because the bird is flying its migratory route. It would have rested in this area and fed to replenish its energy reserve before continuing south.”
Next he showed me a study skin carefully pinned on a drying board until it was ready to be stored in one of the specimen cabinets.
In addition to the study skin specimens, the Ornithology department takes DNA tissue samples from the internal organs and stores them in a cryogenic freezer. These can be used for various studies, including determining the location from which the bird came. Stable isotopes found in the water absorbed by plants and animals can be used to pinpoint where a bird has lived. In the past five to ten years ornithologists have come to rely on stable isotope studies to the extent that bird-banding is becoming obsolete.
The KU Ornithology department uses several other techniques to preserve certain specimens. Some are kept intact and injected with formaldehyde, then stored in alcohol. These are kept in a fire-proof storage area. Other specimens are rendered down to skeletons in a process using carrion beetles. The technique was developed by Charles Bunker from Kansas in early twentieth century, after he noticed a dead coyote being consumed by the beetles while traveling in the state. “Most people find the process somewhat grisly,” Robbins said. “The work is done in a building near Leeds Hall, KU’s fine arts center.” I wondered what my wife Elly, who is an art history major, and works at Kansas City’s Nelson Atkins Museum, and is not overly fond of bugs (let alone beetles!), would make of that.
“How would you like to see the drawer where your bird will be kept,” Robbins asked. I nodded in agreement, and we headed back into the maze of cabinets. The thought occurred to me, as he led the way without hesitation, that Robbins could just as easily locate any of the 100,000 birds in the collection. When we arrived at the cabinet, he opened the door, looked through the drawers for a moment, and slid one out. It held dozens of black and white warblers.
“I know this looks like a lot of specimens,” Robbins told me, “but you have to consider that it represents more than 100 years of collecting.” He showed me the oldest specimen, collected in 1887. “When you consider the time period involved, this is not many samples to track variations in color, size, structure and other characteristics that might interest future researchers. We have no way to predict what they might be trying to learn. That's why these specimens are so valuable.”
Each bird is identified with a tag listing the location where it had been found and the date. I noticed one found on April 11, 1917. April 11 had been my father’s birthday. This bird had been added to the collection six years before he was born and had lain here all his long life. I thought for a minute what it would be like 100 years from now, when a researcher might pick up the warbler I had found and wonder for a moment about who I might have been as I was wondering now about the people who had found these birds. I still felt badly about the warbler’s unfortunately brief life, but the thought she would be preserved and cared for and might contribute to our knowledge of her species was a comfort.
