Dave Willard arrives at the Field Museum of Natural History every weekday morning by 4:30, even though he retired from there four years ago.
On Wednesdays, the bird collection manager-turned-volunteer expects plenty of company. He goes to the freezer and retrieves 150 to 200 dead birds, then lays them on a table to thaw.
Around 6:30 a.m., volunteer Peter Lowther joins him, and by midmorning six or seven others have arrived. The Wednesday crew, avian enthusiasts of all ages, perch on stools around the table. They converse quietly but obviously enjoy each other’s company as they remove feathers and skin from the partially thawed bird carcasses.
This is the first step in preparing bird skeletons for science.
“It’s not real exciting and it’s kind of messy, but it’s important,” Lowther said. “It isn’t for everyone.”
But it’s for them. The Wednesday regulars plus 15 or so other volunteers — some doing messy jobs and some on computers — are a large part of why the museum on Chicago’s lakefront boasts one of the largest bird specimen collections in the world, according to Ben Marks, the museum’s manager of bird and zoological collections.
More than a half-million bird specimens representing 90 percent of the bird species in the world are stored above Bird Hall, the part of the museum that visitors see. Marks said the Field’s collection is eclipsed only by the British Museum, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The specimens — whole body skeletons, stuffed birds (known as study skins) and “pickles” (birds in jars of alcohol) — are crucial to scientific research that happens not only in Chicago but also around the world.
“We prepare over 4,000 bird skeletons annually. Because of that, birds that used to be swept into gutters in the early-morning hours to get them off the sidewalks are now available for research and education,” said Marks, 44, of Chicago. “There’s no chance that would be possible without the volunteers. We are very much committed to and in debt to our volunteers. Their work is very valuable to us.”
Volunteers say the dedication goes two ways.
Erin Englerth, a punk model from Chicago’s Roscoe Village community, has a life-size tattoo of a rose-breasted grosbeak on her forearm memorializing the first bird she processed.
“It can be gross, but it’s also pretty interesting,” she said of her Wednesday work. “How else could you get this close to a bird to study them?”
There are plenty of birds here to study and more will be coming during the fall migration, Marks said.
Between 6,000 and 7,000 dead birds are added to the museum’s collection each year. The majority are brought in by Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a group of 100 volunteers who work in teams before sunrise, making daily treks through downtown during migration season to pick up injured and dead birds that have hit the windows.
Injured birds are usually taken to Willowbrook Wildlife Center, a rehab and education center in Glen Ellyn. Dead birds, ranging from 1 to 300 on the most extreme days of spring and fall migration, go to the Field, said Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.
The Field collection began to grow about 35 years ago when Willard started a salvage program. He and a few other employees and volunteers began picking up dead and injured birds around McCormick Place in the predawn hours, before crows and gulls got them, Marks said. In 2003, the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors started their rescue and retrieving efforts, adding more birds to the collection.
At the Field, the dead birds are immediately stored in a freezer, where staff and volunteers say “a bird can live forever.” Staff members take a muscle sample, look at what’s in the stomach and record data, including measurements and when and where the bird was found. The bird is tagged and assigned a number — a number that is now more than 500,000.
The when and the where are particularly valuable.
“Without that info, it’s of no use to science,” Marks said.
Field Museum research covers a variety of topics, including birds and their pathogens and parasites, assessing body size changes in common migrant species, bird conservation in South America and Central Africa, and more.
The information provided by these birds isn’t just valuable to Field researchers. About 150 requests for specimen loans come in from universities and scientists around the world each year, he said.
Jerome Fuchs, curator of birds at the Paris Museum of Natural History, said his institution has borrowed specimens from the Field that help to understand the evolutionary relationships of species, genetic differentiation among populations and the distribution limits of those populations.
“The Field Museum’s biodiversity program is undoubtedly among the best in the world,” said Fuchs, who added that Marks and other Field ornithologists are considered world experts on DNA analyses.
Once they are inside the Field, all birds are treated the same.
“Even if we have thousands of white-throated sparrows, we are not going to throw the next away,” Marks said. “They’re all individuals and could potentially provide information for research.”
The same could be said of the volunteers.
Marks himself was once a volunteer in the bird collection. The volunteers he now works with are among more than 650 throughout the museum, according to Megan Bradley, volunteer manager at the Field.
Among them are Glenn Gabanski, 68, of Darien, an 11-year volunteer, who is a retired math teacher. He recently spent his morning removing wings from American woodcocks for a research project on how the age of a bird can be assessed by studying the plumage.
And then there’s Lowther, 68, of Homewood, who retired from a tech job at the museum in 2010 but came back as a volunteer in 2011. He has a doctorate in ornithology.
“I guess a chance to look at the birds in the hand is a nice opportunity,” Lowther said. “But I also see the value in why this is done.
We’re creating a lot of potential for future research and we’re learning a little bit, too. The value of doing this overcomes whatever unpleasantness there might be.”
Willard, of Hyde Park, has been fascinated by birds since watching them as a child. “Basically I was paid here for my hobby for 35 years. Now I just enjoy my hobby.”
Englerth, 27, has worked in taxidermy and also volunteers on Mondays at the Field making study skins. She volunteered in the mammals area before coming to bird collections.
“I feel like I learn 100 new things every time I’m there,” she said of the bird collections area where she began volunteering last October. “The people are wonderful. We’re such an eclectic group, but we have so much in common.”
There are also college students, artists and a part-time bike messenger at the Wednesday table, and others who spend their free time helping out. Some are truly behind the scenes.
Back in a quiet corner, Joanna Hosteny and Aaron Mercer choose their own hours, but spend many of them numbering each bone of the cleaned skeletons that come their way, then put them neatly in boxes that will be labeled by another volunteer.
Hosteny, 75, a calligrapher, began volunteering as a docent in the Bird Hall but now prefers this solitary work. She prints minuscule numbers on each bone of birds that are crow size or larger. Smaller bird skeletons are stored in boxes like puzzle pieces.
“I enjoy making a contribution,” said Hosteny, of Chicago. “I’m getting pretty darn good at bird bones. It’s a kick.”
Other volunteers transcribe handwritten data, file materials, sort tissue samples and assist in public programs among other things, Marks said.
Kayleigh Kueffner, a volunteer later hired as a collections assistant, creates study skins. She removes almost all of the insides and replaces them with cotton, leaving a bird that is lying on its back with the wings folded.
“It’s pretty fascinating to me but definitely not stomached by everyone,” she said, while removing a woodpecker’s brain. “It is exciting though to be a part of the whole research effort.”
Lowther said he has made two study skins, but it’s not for him. It is a difficult job that requires hours of training. He prefers “roughing” — removing feathers and skin. He can do a songbird in 2 1/2 minutes.
One of his tablemates remembers how long it took to rough a goose. Another recalls a swan they worked on. And still another, a sandhill crane. They continue on their individual birds while they talk.
Then Gabanski plays the trump card, recalling when he and another volunteer roughed an albatross that covered the entire table.
“It took hours,” he said.
Peggy Macnamara, the museum’s artist-in-residence who works around the corner on the third floor from where these “more science-minded people” are, said she loves just listening to them.
“It’s a heavenly place up here,” Macnamara said. “They’re in there eating doughnuts together and ripping birds apart and having nice conversations.”
Said Willard: “Maybe it’s just luck that we have personalities here that mesh so well. I haven’t met many bird people that I haven’t liked. But this is a particularly fun group.”
Joan Cary is a freelance reporter.
