The red-whiskered bulbul, one of the most common bird species found in India, is hard to miss. She has a smart black crest on her head and a splotch of red on her face. She is bold. She will sing from exposed branches of trees, and show off her wide repertoire of calls in gardens, forests and farmlands. But bold as she is, you would have to be inordinately lucky to catch her to see her feathers up close, or get a quick measurement of her beak length for your study.

Within the collections of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), however, row upon row of this very species are laid out in clean drawers. Collected by Britishers and Indians decades ago by the thousands, these birds are preserved in natural history museums, in India as well as around the world. Similarly, attentive curators preserve insects, marine invertebrates, reptiles, plants, seeds, nests, bones, faecal samples and frozen tissues from a bygone era in many countries.

Sahas Barve’s work at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History involves measuring feathers to understand how birds stay warm in cold conditions. Photo: Sahas Barve.

Sketch of a red-whiskered bulbul by Margaret Cockburn, one of the few colonial women ornithologists in India (c. 1860-1880). Photo: Natural History Museum, London

These specimens make natural history museums an invaluable repository of information for researchers. Sahas Barve, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, was emphatic when he said that his study on understanding how birds keep warm using their feathers would be impossible without such collections.

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