Bird hide

Bellows as a typical item in an ornithological collection. Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) with around 400,000 specimens

In ornithology, bellows (skin) is the hunter's language for the skin of a bird with attached plumage , beak , legs and feet . Unlike in display collections, where the preparations of lifelike dermoplastics are preferred, today mainly bellows are kept in scientific collections. For example, the collection of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin includes around 150,000 birds, 93 percent of which are prepared as hides.

From bird to hide

The explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied with Joachim Quäck on the hunt in the Brazilian jungle (1815–1817). The captured bird was prepared.

Bellows are collected . Mostly the term "collecting" is a euphemism for hunting . The animals are hunted by the gatherer (or one of his assistants). All possible hunting techniques are possible, such as shooting with more or less fine shot or the blowpipe , birds can also be caught with nets, snares, traps, glue and a variety of other techniques . It was not uncommon for the collectors to buy or exchange dead or live birds from locals or at a bird market .

In German ornithology , after 1945, bird hunting for bellows became uncommon, the collections are rarely supplemented, and when they are, they are mainly expanded to include animals that have died in dead animals or in zoos and bird parks. When collecting and transporting bellows, the strict regulations of species protection law , animal protection law and hunting law must be observed.

Preparation, conservation, transport

Since (that possibly only by the by the dissection of birds important data gonads determinable sex, Gonadengröße, the stomach contents , the crop content , parasites , or even the weight go of the bird and the eye color) lost, this ideally, as well as the collection site be and date of collection, noted on a label.

The first step of the dissection is to tie the beak and plug the oral cavity and cloaca. Then the deforming (hunter's language for peeling off skin or fur) begins with the severing of the skin on the abdomen, roughly from the beginning of the breastbone to the anus. The body of the flesh is carefully removed from the skin. The legs are cut at the knee joints. The anus and tail are exposed. The skin is detached from the body of the flesh towards the neck. The upper arms are also exposed and cut. The skin and flesh body are detached from each other from behind towards the head to over the ears, the eyes exposed. Then the body of the meat with the skull is separated from the skin. The remains of meat on the skin and bones now have to be removed. In larger birds, the skin over the forearm is also opened and the muscles removed. Then the body of meat is roughly modeled, for example from cotton, the bird is filled with it and the cuts are sewn.

The skin should be thoroughly degreased. Historically, various methods of simple drying, smoking, tanning or poisoning, especially with arsenic compounds, have been used to preserve the skin.

The wings and feet of the still moist bellows are clung to the body, the beak and the tail are aligned, then the bellows are dried. These work steps were carried out shortly after the bird died, sometimes under adverse conditions, for example in the tropical rainforest. At the collection point, moisture and insect infestation are particularly dangerous for the collection items. Bellows prepared in this way can be stored and sent compactly.

The return transport of collection items was also a danger. Significant parts, such as Alfred Russel Wallace's Brazilian collection , were lost in a ship accident on the Atlantic, which he himself only barely survived. It was similar with the North American groupage of Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied , which fell victim to a fire on a Mississippi steamer.

From the bellows to the assembled piece and the "bellows back"

Bellows are not only a way to preserve a bird's skin for transport or to keep it permanently in collections, but also serve as a raw material for dermoplastics.

In modern bellows collections there are specimens that were previously set up as dermoplastics and that are now detached from the base and stored again as bellows for various reasons (conservation, space requirements, damage).

Bellows collections

Mongolian bullfinch (Bucanetes mongolicus) and desert bullfinch (Bucanetes githagineus). Bellows in the Natural History Museum in Tring , whose collection includes 750,000 specimens.

Yellow-headed pipra ( Lepidothrix vilasboasi ), type specimen (bellows)

The collection of as many species and subspecies as possible, later also in numerous copies (series), is today the basis of the ornithological collections of large museums, which developed in parallel from princely and private natural history cabinets and hunting trophy collections to scientific collections. For a long time there were private collections, some of which were superior to the state collections. An example of this was the collection of ornithologist John Latham . These collections disintegrated after the owner's death or became part of large public collections through purchase or donation.

Bellows are long-lasting if properly stored and well prepared, bellows material from the 18th century is still present in museum collections, this includes type material of some types.

Large collections are located in:

1. new York
2. Tring (England)
3. Leiden (Netherlands)
4. Paris
5. Berlin
6. Frankfurt
7. Vienna

Use of the bellows collections

The following focal points can currently be identified in scientific work with ornithological collections and thus also with bellows:

1. Biosystematics , i.e. the new descriptions of bird species or subspecies.
2. Phylogenetics - collections as archives of historical DNA (genetic information of the genes).
3. Avifaunistic evidence and distribution atlases, some of which are historical collection locations, can supplement current mappings.
4. Historical inventory developments.
5. Species protection . The practical importance of knowledge about historical distribution as well as population sizes lies primarily in its implementation in terms of species protection.
6. Ecology . Based on morphological features, conclusions can be drawn about the way of life of animals and the ecological niche and thus its function in the ecosystem can be characterized.

Readings

Basis of taxonomy

Known collectors

After the age of discovery and with the establishment of the zoological system of Carl von Linné , from the second half of the 18th century the collection of bird hides developed into a systematic activity that was pursued on the one hand by explorers and on the other hand by commercial collectors. While the explorers, provided they were not privateers , supplied the developing public museums, which they partly commissioned and paid for, the commercial collectors worked for their own profit. They sold to museums as well as to the established natural produce trade and thus also to private collectors.

In the course of the nineteenth century, collectors increasingly differentiated themselves from museum ornithologists.

Well-known collectors were: Johann Georg Adam Forster , Johann Baptist von Spix , Johann Natterer for Brazil or Charles Darwin , Alfred Russel Wallace , Otto Finsch , Anton Reichenow , Albert Stewart Meek , Ernst Mayr , Salomon Müller

Johann Friedrich Naumann ( specimens , no bellows)

See also

• Bird skin (bird hide for clothes and clothing accessories)

literature

Historical

• Karl Philipp Christian Stein: Handbook of the preparation and storage of animals of all classes which are intended for natural produce cabinets: containing the methods of the citizen Nicolas, Messrs. Schaumburg and Hoffmann . Grains, 1802.
• Leopold Martin : The practice of natural history: A complete textbook on collecting living and dead natural bodies; their observation, maintenance and care in the free and imprisoned state; Conservation, preparation and placement in collections. - 1st part: Taxidermy or the doctrine of preserving, preparing and collecting natural materials while traveling, stuffing and setting up animals, trading in natural products etc. ... plus 3rd edition by CL Brehm: The art of preparing birds as hides etc. in complete makeover . Voigt, Weimar 1869. - Part 2: Dermoplasty and museology or the modeling of animals and the establishment and maintenance of collections of natural objects. Voigt, Weimar 1870.

Currently

• S. Eck, J. Fiebig, W. Fiedler , I. Heynen, B. Nicolai, T. Töpfer, R. van den Elzen, R. Winkler, F. Woog: Vögel weressen - measuring birds. DO-G project group "Ornithological Collections", German Ornithological Society, Wilhelmshaven & Christ Media Natur, Minden 2011.
• S. Frahnert, M. Päckert, DT Tietze, T. Töpfer: Current focus of collection-related research in ornithology. In: Vogelwarte. Volume 51, No. 3, 2013, pp. 185-191.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ mcz.harvard.edu
2. ^ Museum of Natural History (Berlin), Birds Collection . Last accessed February 10, 2017.
3. ↑ Erwin Stresemann: The Brazilian bird collections of Count von Hoffmannsegg from the years 1800–1812. In: Bonn Zoological Contributions. 1, 1950, pp. 43-51 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
4. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Thorns: Collecting and preparing animals. Franck, 1988, pp. 31-33.
5. ↑ nhm.ac.uk
6. ↑ Sylke Frahnert, Martin Päckert, Dieter Thomas Tietze, Till pottery: Current focus collection-based research in ornithology . Vogelwarte 51, 2013, pp. 185–191. dieterthomastietze.de PDF.