First Trip to DC!

I took my ornithology lab to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a behind-the-scenes look at the bird collection on Friday. I was nervous about getting there with a group of 15 students with traffic, finding a parking place at a metro station, riding the metro, and meeting the museum curator on time. I guess I worried for no reason b/c everything went very smoothly. So smoothly in fact that we look forward to future visit to our nation's capital.

Best of all, Jason decided to take the day off and join us with Alder in tow. Not only was it great to have them there, but it was also logistically a great thing since I did not have to bring my breast pump!

Here we are just off the metro and snapping a quick photo on the mall. Jason feels a bit uneasy and is trying to teach Alder the face to make when that close to George W's residence.

It was great to see how and where the 650,000 bird specimens are kept and hear about the history of such an expansive collection as well as their ongoing efforts to document the biodiversity all over the world. Here are my students standing around the study skins that the curator brought out for us to look at more closely. Before our visit, I asked him to pull out specimens from this region that would demonstrate things I have been talking about in my lectures.

And some of the additional highlights...we were able to see several specimens of species that are now extinct that were once common in this region! What a humbling and awesome experience! Below is a student holding a Carolina Parakeet, extinct in the wild since 1904. This one was collected in 1870! We also saw a Passenger Pigeon, also extinct in the early 1900s, and an Ivory- billed Woodpecker, a most likely extinct species.

We were also surprised and very excited to see a Hudsonian Godwit (shorebird) collected by Charles Darwin himself in 1837! Here is the tag on the bird's leg showing his name and collection date. Incredible!!! My students were excited, but I think they also got a kick out of me: I was like a kid in a candy shop.
And finally, here are Alder and I in the Rotunda, with the elephant that you guys might be familiar with if you have ever visited this wonderful museum.