How to Watch Birds in Museums

I guess it's fair to say that birding has become an essential part of who I am. Our nephew recently mused to his mother that he "didn't really know there was such a thing as birding until I saw it on Aunt Sara's Facebook."

Museums, of course, are another one of my things. So imagine the coming together of these two passions. Why, it could only be better if someone tossed in an ice-cold dry martini with a twist, right?

Maybe not. It all unraveled in the Natural History Museum in London, under Darwin's benign gaze.


Of course I want to see the birds, I said, as we trod inside. So we went to the bird gallery, where we saw toucans.


These looked remarkably like what I had seen flying through the Ecuadoran rainforest just a few weeks before. So did the yellow-rumped cacique, and the crested oropendola, and the mealy parrot. Oh my.

I haven't seen that many different hummingbirds. Ruby-throated, of course. Anna's. Napo sabrewing. A light blueish one in Ecuador. And the hummingbird-like Palestine sunbird. Not nearly as many as this Victorian collector saw:


Yes, that's an entire wood-and-glass cabinet filled with hummingbirds. According to an interpretive sign, This case is a typical display of exotic birds, once popular with the Victorians. Whilst being a fascinating artefact, it is also a sad reminder of the price many birds have to pay for their splendid plumage.

A mother lined up her youngsters to have their picture taken by the case:


This made me think of the first visit to a museum that I can remember: the Royal Newfoundland Museum, in an old brick building on Duckworth Street in St John's. I remember little except walking around a room filled with glass cases, and in one of those cases was the body of a Beothuk Indian -- the Beothuk being the Indigneous people of Newfoundland who were wiped out by the 1830s thanks to disease, violence, and dispossession from their traditional territories (and therefore ways of feeding themselves). But here, by golly, was proof that they once existed. Even then it struck me as wrong. I remember staring into that case, unable to look away. (No, my parents did not take a picture of me in front of it.)

But these cases in London? Couldn't look at them. Couldn't see past my glasses anyway, not with the entire Atlantic ocean welling up behind them.

There are better ways to birdwatch in museums. In the decorative tile section of the British Museum, for example:





Or fine jewelry:



Decorative items like a rustic majolica owl and a fine flock of golden birds carrying forget-me-knots:



You could also dash over to the Victoria and Albert for some mediaevel tapestries:




And a romp through the fabrics and weavings of the Arts and Crafts movement, such as William Morris's famous Strawberry Thief:


Or his Peacock and Dragon curtain:


Or this lovely rendering of swallows on linen by Haslemere Peasant Industries:


I know that a lot of what we know about birds and other creatures we know because people like Darwin killed and preserved them so they could study them. John James Audubon killed everything he drew. But it still makes me sad to think of what we did --and what we lost-- in the name of knowledge.


And that some people just killed things because they looked pretty in a case. Such vital, beautiful creatures deserve more than to be stuffed and stuck in a box for our education and enjoyment. I think we'd be far more edified, not to mention satisfied, by watching those birds zoom through the jungle's undergrowth or hop about our backyard trees during spring migration.


Yellow-rumped warbler in our silver maple.

We might want to ponder the poetry of Terry Tempest Williams:
I pray to the birds.
I pray to the birds because I believe
they carry the messages of my heart upward.
I pray to them because I believe in their existence,
the way their songs begin and end each day
-the invocations and benedictions of earth.
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love
rather than what I fear.
And at the end of my prayers,
they teach me how to listen.