Many birders may feel cheated when they visit a bird site and find out that some of the images on show display stuffed specimens. In the case of extinct birds, such as the dodo, great auk or passenger pigeon, this may be understandable, but when they represent living birds that, given sufficient effort on the part of the website owner, can still be found and photographed, maybe the verdict may be less understanding.
So what’s my excuse ? The fact that I’m not a twitcher, and not single-minded enough to travel to the end of the world in all weather conditions to bag a desired specimen. I’m quite willing to stay alert for interesting birds (and even less interesting ones) on my travels, and sometimes I even frame some of my travels so that it becomes more likely that I will encounter birds to be added to my photographic collection, but that’s as far as it goes.
So when you come to a stately home or a museum with stuffed specimens that you’re very unlikely to encounter in real life, even if you went to the places where you’re more likely to encounter them, then the desire to capture some of the more interesting ones overcomes my scruples to stick with live specimens. Especially since my camera is not the type that can easily pick out distant or fast-flying birds, some of the stuffed ones are as close as I’ll get to making a photographic record of them.
That being said, the main aim of these blogs remains the record of live birds, with stuffed specimens the exception. At the time of writing (24 October 2021) there’s only five types of bird that have made it into my blogs, being :
A live specimen of the Montserrat oriole is placed next to a stuffed specimen held at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for comparison reasons, whereas the Guyanan cock-of-the-rock is one of the stuffed birds held in Cragside House, Rothbury together with a plum-throated cotinga and a greater bird-of-paradise. All three of the latter birds that I’m highly unlikely to see in real life, even if I travelled to places like Papua New Guinea.
Plum-throated cotinga
Greater bird-of-paradise
The following birds I discovered in Norfolk’s Felbrigg Hall, most of which I’m highly unlikely to see in real life, even though they’re on the British List, and many of which probably can be discovered with more perseverance and better equipment than I can muster :
- Grey partridge
- Spotted crake
- Corncrake
- Grey phalarope
- Pomarine skua
- Long-tailed skua
- Storm petrel
- Rough-legged buzzard
- Honey buzzard
- Red kite
- Waxwing
Of these I have been in corncrake country on the Outer Hebrides and heard them, but despite repeated efforts never caught sight of any. Red kites I have seen both in nature and during falconry displays, but I thought the stuffed specimen looked especially life-like, and possibly of a better quality than any pictures I’ve taken of live specimens. As for honey buzzards, I have never seen any live ones, and the only blog I have produced displays images from a presentation by Stephen Roberts during his talk “The Honey Buzzard – Wales’s secret raptor” as part of the “Unknown Wales 2017” conference.
I doubt whether I have much chance of seeing any of the other birds in nature or in captivity (maybe excepting the waxwing, although in South Wales waxwing years are few and far between), hence my decision to register some record shots in case I don’t spot any live specimens.
A few later additions come from the Grosvenor Museum in Chester :
- Lesser spotted woodpecker
- Nutcracker
- Kermadec petrel
- Lesser noddy
- White-tailed eagle
The first two are now extremely rare in Britain, whereas the next two records from the past that may or may not be part of the official British records. The white-tailed eagle is the only one for which I have live recordings, but none of them show the detail of the museum specimen. Still, I can only hope that future records will give me better pictures, although I doubt whether they will ever be able to match the museum specimen.
And some more from the Shrewsbury Museum, Shropshire:
- Black-throated diver
- Merlin
- Capercaillie
- Fake great auk
- Nightjar
- Corncrake
Marnix's Bird Gallery 