...to a shiny new address at: http://rachisaurus.wordpress.com/
All old content has been imported and can be read there, and new posts will now appear on the Wordpress page. Blogger has been good to me, but it's time to move on to pastures new.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Thursday, 11 August 2011
The Sad Tale of Mrs Mallard
Once upon a time there was a mummy duck called Mrs Mallard. She lived on Canada Water, and she had seven babies. Two of them died very young, and Mrs Mallard was very sad.
She loved her babies and took very good care of them. Every evening she would take her youngsters on a trip away from the water, through the Tesco carpark, and into a nearby garden where they could all eat and enjoy a nice dip in the cool clean water of the bird bath.
But one night, something went wrong, and when Mrs Mallard came back the next evening she only brought four babies with her!
That night another disaster struck! The next day, and the next, Mrs Mallard frantically searched the garden and the whole neighbourhood for her little ones, but there was no sign of them anywhere!
All seemed lost, but a few days later Mrs Mallard was back on Canada Water, and she wasn't alone...one of her babies had survived, and was growing very quickly into a handsome young duckling!
Mrs Mallard was sad to have lost so many of her brood, but she was determined to make sure this last little babe made it.
Stay tuned to find out if they live happily ever after...
She loved her babies and took very good care of them. Every evening she would take her youngsters on a trip away from the water, through the Tesco carpark, and into a nearby garden where they could all eat and enjoy a nice dip in the cool clean water of the bird bath.
But one night, something went wrong, and when Mrs Mallard came back the next evening she only brought four babies with her!
That night another disaster struck! The next day, and the next, Mrs Mallard frantically searched the garden and the whole neighbourhood for her little ones, but there was no sign of them anywhere!
All seemed lost, but a few days later Mrs Mallard was back on Canada Water, and she wasn't alone...one of her babies had survived, and was growing very quickly into a handsome young duckling!
Mrs Mallard was sad to have lost so many of her brood, but she was determined to make sure this last little babe made it.
Stay tuned to find out if they live happily ever after...
Friday, 15 July 2011
Value and Worth
It seems like ages since I wrote a post that was actually museum-related, so here's something I threw together from my answers to an activity for the Museum Studies distance-learning course I'm studying at the moment. The question was to discuss the main challenges facing museums today...
The main challenge facing museums today is obviously money: in a recession, museums are always one of the first things to be cut because they are considered non-essential services (I would beg to differ, but we all know my feelings on this), as participation is voluntray on the part of the public that the museum serves, and museums currently have no formal role in education. However, this part of their function is being increasingly emphasised these days, and there are now efforts to forge greater links between schools and museums, and to offer more formal education opportunities in the museum. This aims to give museums greater relevance in their communities, and to engage people in their collections from an early age. Which is good, but it does also mean that already cash-strapped museums are having to find the money to hire learning and education staff, and this often seems to come at the cost of collections staff (there I go again).
I may be trying to bite my tongue here to stop myself ranting on the subject (again), but it IS one of the major challenges facing museums at the moment: how do you improve education, and interpretation of collections, when you have no staff to do it? Expert collections staff are one of the most important assets of a museum, as they are the ones who present collections to the public, choose objects for display, and make them relevant. A collection with no-one to care for it loses any intrinsic value it had if it rots away to nothing in a store-room, and this is what we are allowing our collections to do. And by 'we' I mean society at large, and in particular a Government that does not seem to care that the nation's treasures are going to rack and ruin. Because museums (on the whole) are not profitable, and at the moment everything in the public sector revolves around money (or the lack of it). And you know things are getting bad money-wise when you have museums selling off parts of their collections to raise funds to improve storage for the rest of their objects, and museums that were expecting to have their budget reduced suddenly finding it cut completely, forcing them to close their doors.
I have to admit some sympathy for museum directors in the current climate...it's not a job I would want! They are under pressure to cut budgets, but also under pressure to deliver on their targets for documentation, to improve access to collection, to improve their learning programmes and links with schools, to entice in greater numbers of people, to generate an income, to make their exhibitions more relevant to the communities they serve, and to prove that they are delivering value for money. Museums are no longer simples worlds in which musty academics are king, using their collections to studiously advance the causes of science, and occasionally deigning to put together an exhibition to entertain the riffraff who keep cluttering up their museum*. They are run as businesses, carefully budgeted and managed, and they, like everything else that is publicly funded, must prove their worth as well as their value.
*If indeed they ever were this. But this is the common conception of how museums function behind the scenes.
The main challenge facing museums today is obviously money: in a recession, museums are always one of the first things to be cut because they are considered non-essential services (I would beg to differ, but we all know my feelings on this), as participation is voluntray on the part of the public that the museum serves, and museums currently have no formal role in education. However, this part of their function is being increasingly emphasised these days, and there are now efforts to forge greater links between schools and museums, and to offer more formal education opportunities in the museum. This aims to give museums greater relevance in their communities, and to engage people in their collections from an early age. Which is good, but it does also mean that already cash-strapped museums are having to find the money to hire learning and education staff, and this often seems to come at the cost of collections staff (there I go again).
I may be trying to bite my tongue here to stop myself ranting on the subject (again), but it IS one of the major challenges facing museums at the moment: how do you improve education, and interpretation of collections, when you have no staff to do it? Expert collections staff are one of the most important assets of a museum, as they are the ones who present collections to the public, choose objects for display, and make them relevant. A collection with no-one to care for it loses any intrinsic value it had if it rots away to nothing in a store-room, and this is what we are allowing our collections to do. And by 'we' I mean society at large, and in particular a Government that does not seem to care that the nation's treasures are going to rack and ruin. Because museums (on the whole) are not profitable, and at the moment everything in the public sector revolves around money (or the lack of it). And you know things are getting bad money-wise when you have museums selling off parts of their collections to raise funds to improve storage for the rest of their objects, and museums that were expecting to have their budget reduced suddenly finding it cut completely, forcing them to close their doors.
I have to admit some sympathy for museum directors in the current climate...it's not a job I would want! They are under pressure to cut budgets, but also under pressure to deliver on their targets for documentation, to improve access to collection, to improve their learning programmes and links with schools, to entice in greater numbers of people, to generate an income, to make their exhibitions more relevant to the communities they serve, and to prove that they are delivering value for money. Museums are no longer simples worlds in which musty academics are king, using their collections to studiously advance the causes of science, and occasionally deigning to put together an exhibition to entertain the riffraff who keep cluttering up their museum*. They are run as businesses, carefully budgeted and managed, and they, like everything else that is publicly funded, must prove their worth as well as their value.
*If indeed they ever were this. But this is the common conception of how museums function behind the scenes.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Becoming A Twitcher: Part IV
...in which I become an urban twitcher!
Since my move to London, I have had very little time for indulging my burgeoning interest in British birds. However, that doesn't mean that I haven't seen plenty of them! In fact, London is a veritable smorgasboard of bird-spotting opportunities.
I once again found myself surrounded by house sparrows while staying with some friends down in Hither Green for the first few weeks, as well as the rather more exotic ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula krameri) that have colonised the city in recent years. The birds have been recorded in London since 1855, and from an initially small population of escaped or released pet birds, have grown to a UK population of well over 30,000 individuals today. There has been something of an explosion in recent few years - the population is growing at an estimated rate of 30% per year, and exact current numbers are unknown (the next London survey is being conducted in October by Project Parakeet, a research group run by Imperial College London, and they are asking for volunteers to take part. In case you're interested).
Another invader to be seen in the Hither Green area is the Canada Goose. They are known to be aggressive birds, as well as greedy, and are not the most popular colonists of this country. However, I was willing to forgive the birds in Manor Park, because their chicks were incredibly cute!
I've seen a lot of breeding birds lately ('tis the season, after all!). On Greenland Dock, just across the way from Canada Water, there are platforms set up for use by the local birds, and this year's residents included a coot and a great crested grebe (the pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago, and the birds have now left the nests. Apologies for the weird colour, but they were taken in the evening!).
Possibly the most interesting (least common, anyway!) find so far has been a cormorant, also on Greenland Dock. I don't think I've seen one in the wild before (if you can call Surrey Quays 'the wild'!). Here he (/she?) is, looking nice and regal, as only a diving bird can (it's because their legs are placed so far back on their bodies - it gives them a very upright stance)...
So, what have I learned in the last few weeks? That London is teeming with birds that aren't pigeons! Yes, it's teeming with them too, but there are plenty of other feathered wonders to behold if you look in the right place. Which seems to be anywhere and everywhere you look, as so many species have adapted to and colonised this weird, alien, urban environment.
Since my move to London, I have had very little time for indulging my burgeoning interest in British birds. However, that doesn't mean that I haven't seen plenty of them! In fact, London is a veritable smorgasboard of bird-spotting opportunities.
I once again found myself surrounded by house sparrows while staying with some friends down in Hither Green for the first few weeks, as well as the rather more exotic ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula krameri) that have colonised the city in recent years. The birds have been recorded in London since 1855, and from an initially small population of escaped or released pet birds, have grown to a UK population of well over 30,000 individuals today. There has been something of an explosion in recent few years - the population is growing at an estimated rate of 30% per year, and exact current numbers are unknown (the next London survey is being conducted in October by Project Parakeet, a research group run by Imperial College London, and they are asking for volunteers to take part. In case you're interested).
Another invader to be seen in the Hither Green area is the Canada Goose. They are known to be aggressive birds, as well as greedy, and are not the most popular colonists of this country. However, I was willing to forgive the birds in Manor Park, because their chicks were incredibly cute!
I am now living in Canada Water, which, as the name suggests, provides plenty of opportunities for spotting water birds! On Canada Water itself (a small freshwater lake representing the remnants of a dock that was closed in the 1970s and redeveloped) there is an abundance of waterfowl, including mallards, tufted ducks, coots and moorhens. There is also currently a pair of mute swans raising a monster brood of eight cygnets! (All of which are visible in this picture, as well as a few nosy mallards! And the obligatory London pigeons in the foreground)
Possibly the most interesting (least common, anyway!) find so far has been a cormorant, also on Greenland Dock. I don't think I've seen one in the wild before (if you can call Surrey Quays 'the wild'!). Here he (/she?) is, looking nice and regal, as only a diving bird can (it's because their legs are placed so far back on their bodies - it gives them a very upright stance)...
So, what have I learned in the last few weeks? That London is teeming with birds that aren't pigeons! Yes, it's teeming with them too, but there are plenty of other feathered wonders to behold if you look in the right place. Which seems to be anywhere and everywhere you look, as so many species have adapted to and colonised this weird, alien, urban environment.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Of Birds and Walruses
Once again I find myself apologising for being lax in my blogging, but I do have a good excuse this time: I recently moved to London in a bit of a hurry, and have been busy flat-hunting and settling into my new job as a Documentation Assistant at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. Which is a lovely museum (not that I've yet had time to actually go round all of it properly!); if you haven't been, you should.
It's lovely to once again be back working full-time in a museum; although, despite the fact that my role is on paper largely similar to what I was doing at Glasgow (it's all about digitising collections and editing records for use online), in reality the day-to-day work is quite different: at the Hunterian I was physically looking at the collections and creating new records, but the records already exist at the Horniman, so the job is simply a matter of proof-reading and editing them into the approved format for online publication. Which means that I get zero contact with the collections, but plenty of contact with my computer! But reading through the records is still a fascinating way of learning about the collections, even if I never get to see the objects in person, and the museum does have some fantastic objects...lots of beautiful rare and exotic bird mounts, an amazing anthropology collection including masks and puppets from all over the world, and a stunning near life-sized papier-mache model of Kali standing on Shiva (there is a story behind it, but I can't remember it offhand!), instruments of torture (including an Inquisition-style torture chair that may or may not be genuine), and a wonderfully fat overstuffed walrus! Which was prepared by a taxidermist who had never seen a walrus and didn't know that it was supposed to have folds of skin. The thing is ENORMOUS! And they are big creatures to start with.
Living in London is going to be a bit of an adjustment, but it is quite inspiring to be in a city that has such a huge amount of culture - there are so many museums that I need to go and see, and so many music venues, theatres, markets, cinemas...I will never be short of things to do at the weekends. I haven't had a chance to visit any other museums yet, but first on my list is the newly-rehoused Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, which I'm going to later this week, and then I'm planning to see the other Hunterian Museum (at the Royal College of Surgeons). Followed, of course, by the British Museum (which I've shamefully never been to!) and the Natural History Museum (which I haven't been to in years).
It's lovely to once again be back working full-time in a museum; although, despite the fact that my role is on paper largely similar to what I was doing at Glasgow (it's all about digitising collections and editing records for use online), in reality the day-to-day work is quite different: at the Hunterian I was physically looking at the collections and creating new records, but the records already exist at the Horniman, so the job is simply a matter of proof-reading and editing them into the approved format for online publication. Which means that I get zero contact with the collections, but plenty of contact with my computer! But reading through the records is still a fascinating way of learning about the collections, even if I never get to see the objects in person, and the museum does have some fantastic objects...lots of beautiful rare and exotic bird mounts, an amazing anthropology collection including masks and puppets from all over the world, and a stunning near life-sized papier-mache model of Kali standing on Shiva (there is a story behind it, but I can't remember it offhand!), instruments of torture (including an Inquisition-style torture chair that may or may not be genuine), and a wonderfully fat overstuffed walrus! Which was prepared by a taxidermist who had never seen a walrus and didn't know that it was supposed to have folds of skin. The thing is ENORMOUS! And they are big creatures to start with.
Living in London is going to be a bit of an adjustment, but it is quite inspiring to be in a city that has such a huge amount of culture - there are so many museums that I need to go and see, and so many music venues, theatres, markets, cinemas...I will never be short of things to do at the weekends. I haven't had a chance to visit any other museums yet, but first on my list is the newly-rehoused Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, which I'm going to later this week, and then I'm planning to see the other Hunterian Museum (at the Royal College of Surgeons). Followed, of course, by the British Museum (which I've shamefully never been to!) and the Natural History Museum (which I haven't been to in years).
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Becoming A Twitcher: Part III
...in which I go on holiday to one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and come back with lots of pictures of birds.
And butterflies, and lizards. All of them boring and common, too! And yet they somehow seemed more interesting in Rome.
There were lots of starlings and other common 'garden' birds hanging around too, which I didn't manage to photograph. I also saw some bats flitting around by the Colosseum, but didn't spot the kestrels that the sign in the park suggested I should see in Rome. To be honest, I was dubious anyway - the kestrel isn't something I'd usually think of as an urban bird.
And even though the birds I did photograph are all common as muck, they still provided a learning opportunity...for example, I had only ever seen one hooded crow (while in Scotland), and didn't know they were so common in Europe; they were everywhere both in the city and out at Ostia. Also, I hadn't realised that the sparrows in Italy were their own species. I had naively assumed that they were the same as the sparrows we find in Britain - they certainly look very much like tree sparrows at a casual glance (and my photo isn't exactly much help in identifying it, because it's taken from too far away!).
Obviously I didn't only take pictures of common wildlife. I do also have lots of photos of stunning Roman architecture and statuary, but since they're not biological in nature I'm not putting them up here...Oh, go on then, you've twisted my arm. You can have one.
What did I tell you? Stunning statuary.
And butterflies, and lizards. All of them boring and common, too! And yet they somehow seemed more interesting in Rome.
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| Gull (Larus sp.) nesting in Baths of Caracalla, Rome |
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| Common lizard (Lacerta vivipara). Ostia |
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| Another common lizard (Lacerta vivipara). Ostia |
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| Common blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus). Ostia |
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| Wall brown butterfly (Lasiommata megera). Ostia |
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| Italian sparrow (Passer italiae). Ostia |
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| Hooded crow (Corvus cornix). Ostia |
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| Hooded crow (Corvus cornix). Forum of Augustus, Rome |
There were lots of starlings and other common 'garden' birds hanging around too, which I didn't manage to photograph. I also saw some bats flitting around by the Colosseum, but didn't spot the kestrels that the sign in the park suggested I should see in Rome. To be honest, I was dubious anyway - the kestrel isn't something I'd usually think of as an urban bird.
And even though the birds I did photograph are all common as muck, they still provided a learning opportunity...for example, I had only ever seen one hooded crow (while in Scotland), and didn't know they were so common in Europe; they were everywhere both in the city and out at Ostia. Also, I hadn't realised that the sparrows in Italy were their own species. I had naively assumed that they were the same as the sparrows we find in Britain - they certainly look very much like tree sparrows at a casual glance (and my photo isn't exactly much help in identifying it, because it's taken from too far away!).
Obviously I didn't only take pictures of common wildlife. I do also have lots of photos of stunning Roman architecture and statuary, but since they're not biological in nature I'm not putting them up here...Oh, go on then, you've twisted my arm. You can have one.
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| Statue of Hercules. Temple of Hercules, Ostia. |
What did I tell you? Stunning statuary.
Monday, 16 May 2011
Biodiversity Rocks!
...as the sticker I was given at Bristol Zoo on Saturday says!
It is currently Biodiversity Week at Bristol Zoo, and I was there with the Bristol Museum posse to show people some native insects from our collections, while the biology curator led bug-hunting trips around the herbaceous border. The rain held off, which was good for insect-finding, and we saw lots of bees, flies, and a male common blue damselfly. I felt a little inadequate at times, as people asked me to try and ID insects they'd seen in their gardens from vague descriptions, and I was forced to admit I didn't have a clue (I'm a vertebrate zoologist! I'm pretty hopeless with all things spineless), but thankfully I had two knowledgeable insect people on hand to help out! I, of course, kept getting distracted by birds (that being my latest obsession and all). And not just the ones in cages...Bristol Zoo is swarming with wild native species, and they are all very bold around people - the picnicers on the lawn were constantly being eyed up by jackdaws and robins, who came very close and waited around for morsels to be dropped in their direction. I talked to some people about moths, the kids that the curator took around the border actually caught some insects (which is a minor miracle given how some of them were randomly running round waving their nets!), and a good day was had by all.
I even had some free time to wander round the zoo, which has changed considerably since I was a kid. They've reduced the number of big cat species they keep to expand the lion enclosure to a good size, the monkey and bird houses have been completely renovated, and conditions all round seem to have improved. I was quite impressed. And I got to feed some lorikeets, which was pretty amazing.
Sadly, Saturday's little adventure probably marks the end of my voluntary work with Bristol Museum, as I have been offered a documentation job in London and will be moving soon. Which probably means that the foreign bird mount project will never get finished - they won't curate themselves, you know! But the London job is only temporary until April next year, so I may yet be back! They can't get rid of me that easily :)
It is currently Biodiversity Week at Bristol Zoo, and I was there with the Bristol Museum posse to show people some native insects from our collections, while the biology curator led bug-hunting trips around the herbaceous border. The rain held off, which was good for insect-finding, and we saw lots of bees, flies, and a male common blue damselfly. I felt a little inadequate at times, as people asked me to try and ID insects they'd seen in their gardens from vague descriptions, and I was forced to admit I didn't have a clue (I'm a vertebrate zoologist! I'm pretty hopeless with all things spineless), but thankfully I had two knowledgeable insect people on hand to help out! I, of course, kept getting distracted by birds (that being my latest obsession and all). And not just the ones in cages...Bristol Zoo is swarming with wild native species, and they are all very bold around people - the picnicers on the lawn were constantly being eyed up by jackdaws and robins, who came very close and waited around for morsels to be dropped in their direction. I talked to some people about moths, the kids that the curator took around the border actually caught some insects (which is a minor miracle given how some of them were randomly running round waving their nets!), and a good day was had by all.
I even had some free time to wander round the zoo, which has changed considerably since I was a kid. They've reduced the number of big cat species they keep to expand the lion enclosure to a good size, the monkey and bird houses have been completely renovated, and conditions all round seem to have improved. I was quite impressed. And I got to feed some lorikeets, which was pretty amazing.
Sadly, Saturday's little adventure probably marks the end of my voluntary work with Bristol Museum, as I have been offered a documentation job in London and will be moving soon. Which probably means that the foreign bird mount project will never get finished - they won't curate themselves, you know! But the London job is only temporary until April next year, so I may yet be back! They can't get rid of me that easily :)
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Becoming A Twitcher: Part II
In which I try to get better acquainted with the neighbours, while my cat just tries to kill them...
I have spent some time this week watching the house sparrows that abound here, and have quite enjoyed it. I'm becoming fond of the little guys. On Tuesday morning there was a whole crowd of them in the garden, using our old pile of shrubbery-related waste as a source of nest materials, and having dust-baths in the gravel. I had been planning to get rid of that pile of rubbish, but have now decided to leave it there for a while. The birds seem to have been very busy finishing off their nests in the last few days, dashing back and forth between our hedge and the roof in which they roost. I even managed to get close enough to take some photos of these tiny, but quite pretty, birds:
I have spent some time this week watching the house sparrows that abound here, and have quite enjoyed it. I'm becoming fond of the little guys. On Tuesday morning there was a whole crowd of them in the garden, using our old pile of shrubbery-related waste as a source of nest materials, and having dust-baths in the gravel. I had been planning to get rid of that pile of rubbish, but have now decided to leave it there for a while. The birds seem to have been very busy finishing off their nests in the last few days, dashing back and forth between our hedge and the roof in which they roost. I even managed to get close enough to take some photos of these tiny, but quite pretty, birds:
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| Female |
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| Male collecting nest materials |
I also discovered this week that we have some more feathered neighbours...I knew there were blackbirds around, because they are quite visible and vocal garden birds, but I didn't know what else was nesting in the Leylandii that line the backs of the gardens on our street - the trees are so dense that you cannot see. Usually. However, thanks to this giant monster (he really is a very large cat!),
who goes by the name of Loki (but has been sweetly nicknamed Lucifer by the people next-door!), I got to see some of them yesterday, when he raided a dunnock nest and killed two chicks (well, we're hoping he'd killed the first before my sister's spaniel pup stole it and ate it! We took the second one off him while it was just about still alive, because we didn't think the pup needed any more snacks! It died shortly afterwards). The parents hung around to protest for a very long time (they were still calling this afternoon), but have hopefully moved on now. I don't know if it is early enough in the season for them to raise a second clutch (and of course they would have to move their nest away from our garden!). Dunnocks are very interesting little birds with very inventive love lives, but their offspring are obviously very boring, because all the internet would tell me about dunnock nests is that they often play host to cuckoo chicks. Which we don't have around here.
I am slowly increasing my abilities in birdsong recognition, and can now add dunnocks to the repertoire, thanks to yesterday's little escapades, as well as house sparrows.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Foreign Bird Mount Project: Week I
So, having figured out how much (or how little, as the case may be) progress had been made on the foreign bird mount collection in the past, this week I was ready to get down to work and start curating some birds.
It was a slow start, as I discovered half a cabinet that had been missed previously and had to back-track a little from the place I thought we'd be starting at, but good progress was made:
One shelf of pigeons was fully documented and photographed, and we made a start on the next shelf, containing parrots, including a beautiful glass case of 5 birds posed on some artfully arranged vegetation with a lovely painted background.
I even managed to identify a couple of birds that had no data on them, by comparison with other specimens (only the obvious ones. For example, there were two birds labelled as crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes), and a third with no label that looked just like them. As there are no other species of crest-bearing pigeon with which it could easily be confused, it was a fair assumption that they were all the same species).
It's a good feeling to be doing some real curatorial work, and to be able to do it - it's a great boost to the confidence to be given a job and then left to get on with it, knowing what I'm doing and not needing supervision! It's not very glamorous, though...many of the specimens are very old and covered in nasty substances (arsenic, mercury, methyl bromide, who knows what else...), so we have to wear lab coats, gloves, and gas masks when handling them. It's not a good look. The masks are really uncomfortable, and a bit hard to breathe in, but I suppose it's better than inhaling lots of arsenic dust!
For the benefit of my non-museum readers (which is probably a good half of my readership of about 10 people!), I suppose I should explain exactly what I'm doing, because museums are rather odd, esoteric worlds to those not in the know!
The procedure for curating/documenting a collection is fairly straightforward (if a little long-winded. Sorry):
The background:
When an object enters the museum (e.g. through a donation/purchase/bequest) it is given an accession or entry number, and a form is filled out with details of what it is, where it was collected and who it came from (if these details are known). Often a group of material will be acquired in one batch, and the objects will all be given the same accession/entry number.
Each item is then given an individual and unique register number, and the details of the specimen will be recorded in a register book (or on a computer database - some museums no longer use paper records much). There are recognised standards for the documentation of museum material, and the most basic standard requires that records include: what a specimen is, where it's stored within the museum, and that both the record and the specimen bear the register number (so that you can find it again, obviously!).
However, over time information about specimens may be lost (Bristol Museum, for example, lost both a lot of information and a lot of specimens in WW2 when the museum was bombed), or the specimens may become disassociated from any information about them, or accessioned material may never get as far as being registered. Many museum collections include material that is variously: fully accessioned and registered; accessioned but not registered; either of the above but the information has been lost/disassociated; lacking any data at all.
So that the museum knows what it has and where everything is, it is important that each specimen has some documentation. This is where I come in:
So, that's what I do! Exciting, isn't it? Hello? Anyone there...? Oh, you've fallen asleep. Never mind, then. I'll let myself out quietly...
It was a slow start, as I discovered half a cabinet that had been missed previously and had to back-track a little from the place I thought we'd be starting at, but good progress was made:
One shelf of pigeons was fully documented and photographed, and we made a start on the next shelf, containing parrots, including a beautiful glass case of 5 birds posed on some artfully arranged vegetation with a lovely painted background.
I even managed to identify a couple of birds that had no data on them, by comparison with other specimens (only the obvious ones. For example, there were two birds labelled as crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes), and a third with no label that looked just like them. As there are no other species of crest-bearing pigeon with which it could easily be confused, it was a fair assumption that they were all the same species).
It's a good feeling to be doing some real curatorial work, and to be able to do it - it's a great boost to the confidence to be given a job and then left to get on with it, knowing what I'm doing and not needing supervision! It's not very glamorous, though...many of the specimens are very old and covered in nasty substances (arsenic, mercury, methyl bromide, who knows what else...), so we have to wear lab coats, gloves, and gas masks when handling them. It's not a good look. The masks are really uncomfortable, and a bit hard to breathe in, but I suppose it's better than inhaling lots of arsenic dust!
For the benefit of my non-museum readers (which is probably a good half of my readership of about 10 people!), I suppose I should explain exactly what I'm doing, because museums are rather odd, esoteric worlds to those not in the know!
The procedure for curating/documenting a collection is fairly straightforward (if a little long-winded. Sorry):
The background:
When an object enters the museum (e.g. through a donation/purchase/bequest) it is given an accession or entry number, and a form is filled out with details of what it is, where it was collected and who it came from (if these details are known). Often a group of material will be acquired in one batch, and the objects will all be given the same accession/entry number.
Each item is then given an individual and unique register number, and the details of the specimen will be recorded in a register book (or on a computer database - some museums no longer use paper records much). There are recognised standards for the documentation of museum material, and the most basic standard requires that records include: what a specimen is, where it's stored within the museum, and that both the record and the specimen bear the register number (so that you can find it again, obviously!).
However, over time information about specimens may be lost (Bristol Museum, for example, lost both a lot of information and a lot of specimens in WW2 when the museum was bombed), or the specimens may become disassociated from any information about them, or accessioned material may never get as far as being registered. Many museum collections include material that is variously: fully accessioned and registered; accessioned but not registered; either of the above but the information has been lost/disassociated; lacking any data at all.
So that the museum knows what it has and where everything is, it is important that each specimen has some documentation. This is where I come in:
- Each shelf of foreign bird mounts is decanted, and the birds are sorted into those that already have register numbers attached to them, and those that don't.
- For the ones that have register numbers, it is simply a case of checking that their records and labels contain all the same information, and that the information is correct.
- The ones that don't have register numbers are given shiny new register numbers and all of the information available on each specimen's label (if there is any) is entered into the register book. If they have no information, they are still given a register number but just have to go into the book as, e.g., 'unidentified parrot'. A label is attached to any specimens that don't already have one.
- Every specimen is then photographed (making sure the register number is visible in the photo so we can match photos to the correct specimens later), and checked for any evidence of pest damage.
- The shelf the birds came from is cleaned, and the birds returned to the shelf, in taxonomic order where space allows (with the prettiest ones to the front to impress visitors to the store!).
- All of the records, and the photographs, will eventually be transferred onto the computer database, where they will be searchable via the internet.
- Once the whole collection is documented, they will then be sorted properly into taxonomic order (they are currently roughly in order, but somewhat mixed). This is important because it makes specimens easier to find when they are in a recognised order. There are other systems for ordering collections used in museums (including alphabetical), but taxonomy is a more useful system because it puts related species near each other and more findable if, for example, someone requires members of a particular order or family for research.
So, that's what I do! Exciting, isn't it? Hello? Anyone there...? Oh, you've fallen asleep. Never mind, then. I'll let myself out quietly...
Monday, 11 April 2011
Becoming A Twitcher: Part I
In which I recognise a gaping hole in my zoological knowledge, and begin trying to fill it...
I think the first time I properly realised that I know NOTHING about birds was 3 years ago, while on a trip to Australia...thanks to some lovely people pointing out every new animal that appeared in the garden of the house I was staying in, within a week I could identify by sight and sound around half a dozen birds. And I wondered if I'd be able to do the same with British species (the answer: probably not). While I can identify many mammals by sight (and by skull these days!), I have never paid much attention to birds. Which leaves me, as a vertebrate zoologist, with a large black hole of ignorance surrounding a good chunk of the animal kingdom. And nobody likes having a large black hole of ignorance (and yes, I'm aware that's a crappy metaphor...physicists, please don't write in to complain).
However, I didn't do anything about this distressing lack of knowledge for a couple of years...years spent being generally too busy to worry about birds. But in the last few weeks I have found myself with the spare time, and the motivation, to take action. The spare time has been helpfully provided by my lack of a job, and the motivation by my voluntary work at Bristol Museum: I was recently drafted in to help two apprentices catalogue the learning and handling collection, which consists mostly of British mammal and bird taxidermy, and found myself unable to identify to any useful level ("Some kind of duck" being not particularly helpful!) many of the bird mounts.
So with my trusty Bill Oddie guidebook (that I bought with the best of birdwatching intentions while living in Glasgow last year, and never used) and my shiny new monocular, last week I started trying to identify the birds in my garden (not that there are many - I have 2 cats); seemed as good a place to start as any. My first victory was over the birds that nest in the neighbour's roof and flit about in my hedge - Bill Oddie helpfully identified them as house sparrows (which I'm aware are common as muck, but I didn't know what they looked like! EDIT: Apparently they're no longer common as muck, and are in fact now on the Red List of threatened species due to a drastic population decline in recent decades. They're certainly not threatened around here!).
Unfortunately, so far that remains my only real victory...I took both monocular and book down to the field that my parents own yesterday, which is always teeming with small birds: you can hear them all around you. What I hadn't factored in was actually being able to see them. Small brown birds on brown tree branches are really quite hard to spot. The only things I did see were the few large and obvious species that I didn't need Bill Oddie to identify for me:
Rooks (lots of them - there's a large and very loud rookery at the top of the hill)
Wood pigeons
Blackbirds
Magpies
A pheasant (male, accidentally flushed out of a nettle patch)
Two mallards (both male, disturbed on the stream)
And one falcon, probably a sparrowhawk (it was too far away to identify even with the monocular, but it wasn't a kestrel because it was circling rather than hovering, and since sparrowhawks are the most common birds of prey in this area it seemed a good guess)
Next task: Learn to identify birds by song as well as sight, because I may never be able to see all the small twittery things that lurk in the bushes, but I can certainly hear them!
However, I didn't do anything about this distressing lack of knowledge for a couple of years...years spent being generally too busy to worry about birds. But in the last few weeks I have found myself with the spare time, and the motivation, to take action. The spare time has been helpfully provided by my lack of a job, and the motivation by my voluntary work at Bristol Museum: I was recently drafted in to help two apprentices catalogue the learning and handling collection, which consists mostly of British mammal and bird taxidermy, and found myself unable to identify to any useful level ("Some kind of duck" being not particularly helpful!) many of the bird mounts.
So with my trusty Bill Oddie guidebook (that I bought with the best of birdwatching intentions while living in Glasgow last year, and never used) and my shiny new monocular, last week I started trying to identify the birds in my garden (not that there are many - I have 2 cats); seemed as good a place to start as any. My first victory was over the birds that nest in the neighbour's roof and flit about in my hedge - Bill Oddie helpfully identified them as house sparrows (which I'm aware are common as muck, but I didn't know what they looked like! EDIT: Apparently they're no longer common as muck, and are in fact now on the Red List of threatened species due to a drastic population decline in recent decades. They're certainly not threatened around here!).
Unfortunately, so far that remains my only real victory...I took both monocular and book down to the field that my parents own yesterday, which is always teeming with small birds: you can hear them all around you. What I hadn't factored in was actually being able to see them. Small brown birds on brown tree branches are really quite hard to spot. The only things I did see were the few large and obvious species that I didn't need Bill Oddie to identify for me:
Rooks (lots of them - there's a large and very loud rookery at the top of the hill)
Wood pigeons
Blackbirds
Magpies
A pheasant (male, accidentally flushed out of a nettle patch)
Two mallards (both male, disturbed on the stream)
And one falcon, probably a sparrowhawk (it was too far away to identify even with the monocular, but it wasn't a kestrel because it was circling rather than hovering, and since sparrowhawks are the most common birds of prey in this area it seemed a good guess)
Next task: Learn to identify birds by song as well as sight, because I may never be able to see all the small twittery things that lurk in the bushes, but I can certainly hear them!
Sunday, 10 April 2011
And now for something completely different...
Today, for some light relief, I give you:
Crappy taxidermy (click me. Go on, you know you want to)
Yes, folks, this website really exists. Some of it is not for the faint of heart, but the fur-bearing trout, mouse pope, and Utah werewolf are particularly enjoyable. And of course there are inevitably lots of pictures of the Brewdog squirrel bottles, and the ubiquitous assquatch. Have to say I am fairly dubious about the panda, it doesn't look real (thankfully).
Enjoy!
Bad taxidermy is always something I find quite sad (and sometimes downright horrifying!), because that animal has died for nothing...just to become a cautionary tale in how NOT to stuff something. I've seen plenty of examples in museums, particularly amongst the older specimens (there were lots of amateurs just stuffing dead things willy nilly in the 19th century). Monkeys must be unusually hard to get right, because I have seen many terrible examples. It's the face that seems to be the difficult part, because they often have the most terrifying grimaces. But then, I think I'd be grimacing too if I was shot and stuffed!
My favourite piece of crappy taxidermy that I have seen belongs to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and is a porcupine's arse mounted on a board like a trophy head. It just looks so comically pathetic. Unfortunately they don't seem to have the matching head, or I'm sure it would be on display, mounted on either side of a wall.
Crappy taxidermy (click me. Go on, you know you want to)
Yes, folks, this website really exists. Some of it is not for the faint of heart, but the fur-bearing trout, mouse pope, and Utah werewolf are particularly enjoyable. And of course there are inevitably lots of pictures of the Brewdog squirrel bottles, and the ubiquitous assquatch. Have to say I am fairly dubious about the panda, it doesn't look real (thankfully).
Enjoy!
Bad taxidermy is always something I find quite sad (and sometimes downright horrifying!), because that animal has died for nothing...just to become a cautionary tale in how NOT to stuff something. I've seen plenty of examples in museums, particularly amongst the older specimens (there were lots of amateurs just stuffing dead things willy nilly in the 19th century). Monkeys must be unusually hard to get right, because I have seen many terrible examples. It's the face that seems to be the difficult part, because they often have the most terrifying grimaces. But then, I think I'd be grimacing too if I was shot and stuffed!
My favourite piece of crappy taxidermy that I have seen belongs to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and is a porcupine's arse mounted on a board like a trophy head. It just looks so comically pathetic. Unfortunately they don't seem to have the matching head, or I'm sure it would be on display, mounted on either side of a wall.
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane?...Oh wait, it is a bird"
So, after a few weeks spent helping some apprentices in the learning department of Bristol Museum catalogue and identify the learning and handling collection (which mostly consists of taxidermy), and feeling like a fairly useless zoologist at times ("Umm...it's a bird? Possibly a house martin?" (it wasn't, it was a sand martin, but I was damn close! My bird identifying abilities are somewhat patchy. I'm working on that - I even bought a monocular (never really got on with binoculars) and Bill Oddie's Birds Of Britain And Ireland (What else? The man was a Goodie, he's a living legend!) to be able to go out birdwatching)), I am now back to my usual routine of Tuesdays in the Biology department (wow, that was a long sentence! Possibly a record even for me).
And I get to do some real curatorial work! Not that most of the stuff I do at the museum isn't curatorial (there's always lots of cataloguing and ferrying around of specimens, moving things in and out of freezers, etc.), but I now have my very own project to work on: I (and one other volunteer) will be responsible for the curation and documentation of the foreign bird mount collection. This was started in 2006 by the previous curator and a volunteer, and despite the project plan having a time estimate of 3 months on it, 5 years later it is still unfinished, stuck in Museum Limbo along with many other projects started by one curator and never completed after their departure. This seems to be a common problem in the museum world, and I suspect in many jobs: when one person leaves, there isn't always a handover to the next person, or any documentation left to explain what they were working on and how far they'd got. It just isn't always possible. But it does mean that, when someone eventually comes to pick up a predecessor's work, they are left scratching their head trying to figure out what has and hasn't been done.
Which is what I spent most of yesterday afternoon doing! As it turns out, there is more work to do than we originally thought, but it is less daunting than it originally looked. Having found the MDA card catalogue for the collection, the relevant register book, and having looked through the cabinets to check the progress already made, I think I now have a workable system figured out for dealing with the documentation of the specimens. It's just a shame that I can't be at the museum full-time...it'll take months on only one day a week, but I could probably get it all done in a few weeks if I was there full-time! But never mind. It feels good to be able to do some work that will be of real, lasting benefit to the museum: in (hopefully) somewhat less than another 5 years, they will have a beautifully catalogued, photographed, and taxonomically ordered collection of foreign birds!
And I get to do some real curatorial work! Not that most of the stuff I do at the museum isn't curatorial (there's always lots of cataloguing and ferrying around of specimens, moving things in and out of freezers, etc.), but I now have my very own project to work on: I (and one other volunteer) will be responsible for the curation and documentation of the foreign bird mount collection. This was started in 2006 by the previous curator and a volunteer, and despite the project plan having a time estimate of 3 months on it, 5 years later it is still unfinished, stuck in Museum Limbo along with many other projects started by one curator and never completed after their departure. This seems to be a common problem in the museum world, and I suspect in many jobs: when one person leaves, there isn't always a handover to the next person, or any documentation left to explain what they were working on and how far they'd got. It just isn't always possible. But it does mean that, when someone eventually comes to pick up a predecessor's work, they are left scratching their head trying to figure out what has and hasn't been done.
Which is what I spent most of yesterday afternoon doing! As it turns out, there is more work to do than we originally thought, but it is less daunting than it originally looked. Having found the MDA card catalogue for the collection, the relevant register book, and having looked through the cabinets to check the progress already made, I think I now have a workable system figured out for dealing with the documentation of the specimens. It's just a shame that I can't be at the museum full-time...it'll take months on only one day a week, but I could probably get it all done in a few weeks if I was there full-time! But never mind. It feels good to be able to do some work that will be of real, lasting benefit to the museum: in (hopefully) somewhat less than another 5 years, they will have a beautifully catalogued, photographed, and taxonomically ordered collection of foreign birds!
Monday, 28 February 2011
'New Dinosaur Fossil Hailed As Missing Link'
I know this topic has already been covered somewhat (and in a far more entertaining manner) by The Guardian writer Martin Robbins, but I thought I'd shove my own oar in, because it is something that irritates me almost every time I open a newspaper (you may notice that this blog is going a bit ranty at the moment...I blame this on Charlie Brooker (I've been watching 10 O'Clock Live and How TV Ruined Your Life lately) and Ben Goldacre (whose book Bad Science I am currently reading)).
Science is very poorly reported in the news, and even institutions that you would expect to take fact-checking and journalistic integrity seriously rarely seem to get it right. And the quality of the reporting seems to go rapidly downhill when they are discussing palaeontology in particular. I have seen new fossil finds hailed as the evidence 'that finally proves Darwin's 200-year-old theory of evolution' (excuse me? Finally proves?! This is a direct quote from a news piece I saw last year (although sadly I can't remember which particular fossil find they were talking about)), any number of 'missing links' which a) weren't missing to start with, and b) weren't in fact related to the species the journalist quoted them as being links between, and of course the perennial favourite: any and every fossil animal over 65 million years old being described as a dinosaur.
I am aware that the media have to aim their pieces at the general public who may or may not have a good grasp of science, and that they need to keep things fairly simple, but surely there is no need to call a pterosaur a dinosaur? Everyone can recognise a pterosaur when they see one, so just call it a pterosaur. Most people already think of pterosaurs as dinosaurs, and wrongly naming them as such in news articles just perpetuates this misunderstanding. But I see it all the time. And this is only one example of the level of factual inaccuracy that reguarly crops up in the reporting of biology.
Of course most science journalists are not themselves scientists, and seem to have a limited grasp of their own subject matter, so it's easy to see how these errors and misunderstandings can creep in. The answer is obvious: hire scientists who can write rather than writers who don't know science. Or just check your facts before sending an article to press. That is, after all, what Wikipedia is there for.
Science is very poorly reported in the news, and even institutions that you would expect to take fact-checking and journalistic integrity seriously rarely seem to get it right. And the quality of the reporting seems to go rapidly downhill when they are discussing palaeontology in particular. I have seen new fossil finds hailed as the evidence 'that finally proves Darwin's 200-year-old theory of evolution' (excuse me? Finally proves?! This is a direct quote from a news piece I saw last year (although sadly I can't remember which particular fossil find they were talking about)), any number of 'missing links' which a) weren't missing to start with, and b) weren't in fact related to the species the journalist quoted them as being links between, and of course the perennial favourite: any and every fossil animal over 65 million years old being described as a dinosaur.
I am aware that the media have to aim their pieces at the general public who may or may not have a good grasp of science, and that they need to keep things fairly simple, but surely there is no need to call a pterosaur a dinosaur? Everyone can recognise a pterosaur when they see one, so just call it a pterosaur. Most people already think of pterosaurs as dinosaurs, and wrongly naming them as such in news articles just perpetuates this misunderstanding. But I see it all the time. And this is only one example of the level of factual inaccuracy that reguarly crops up in the reporting of biology.
Of course most science journalists are not themselves scientists, and seem to have a limited grasp of their own subject matter, so it's easy to see how these errors and misunderstandings can creep in. The answer is obvious: hire scientists who can write rather than writers who don't know science. Or just check your facts before sending an article to press. That is, after all, what Wikipedia is there for.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Fighting The Battle Of Who Could Care Less
The title of today's post comes from a Ben Folds Five song (entitled, funnily enough, Battle Of Who Could Care Less), mostly because it happens to be playing in my study at this exact moment, but it's also quite apt. I hate doing it, but I feel a rant coming on...
As an unemployed museums person on the bottom end of the museums ladder, I spend a lot of time scouring the internet for job adverts. And a trend is beginning to attract my attention: I have seen in the last year (last few months particularly) a lot of traineeships and internships aimed at getting young people into enty-level positions which would otherwise be denied to them due to lack of education/experience. Which is great - the museums sector desperately needs a crop of young people with experience, and outside of volunteering there are few ways to get the necessary experience. But what I'm not seeing advertised anywhere are the entry-level positions that these trainees/interns are supposed to be going into after they're done being trainees and interns. If there were any, I'd be applying for them myself!
Maybe next year there will a spate of entry-level positions advertised to accomodate these fresh, newly-trained museums professionals. But I doubt it. The museum sector as a whole was hit early and hard by the governments cuts made in the wake of the recent (and ongoing) financial crisis, and continue to be made. Where people leave or retire from a post, they are not generally renewed or readvertised, and new positions are very rarely being made. Especially, it seems, in the sciences. This may just be my bias because I pay more attention to what's going on the the world of science, but I'm not convinced. While science curatorships are cut, positions in the arts are still being advertised. Which doesn't surprise me, because while the general public is not as interested in art (see my post from a while ago discussing the results of a Museums Association survey on this topic), it is the art supporters that bring in the most money to museums.
So where does this leave our current trainees and interns? Sadly, I suspect it will leave them in the same position as me in a year or two - unemployed and bitter at the injustice of the world, with no use for their new-found knowledge and skills except to volunteer at their local museum, which will probably by then be run by an army of volunteers as the paid staff find themselves victims of yet more cut-backs. Ah, the Big Society at work.
Hey-ho. Actually, this week I've found a few jobs to apply for (some of which I'm actually qualified for!), and I've just applied for a job in the States, where the global financial fucktastrophe doesn't seem to have hit museums quite so hard. Fingers crossed!
As an unemployed museums person on the bottom end of the museums ladder, I spend a lot of time scouring the internet for job adverts. And a trend is beginning to attract my attention: I have seen in the last year (last few months particularly) a lot of traineeships and internships aimed at getting young people into enty-level positions which would otherwise be denied to them due to lack of education/experience. Which is great - the museums sector desperately needs a crop of young people with experience, and outside of volunteering there are few ways to get the necessary experience. But what I'm not seeing advertised anywhere are the entry-level positions that these trainees/interns are supposed to be going into after they're done being trainees and interns. If there were any, I'd be applying for them myself!
Maybe next year there will a spate of entry-level positions advertised to accomodate these fresh, newly-trained museums professionals. But I doubt it. The museum sector as a whole was hit early and hard by the governments cuts made in the wake of the recent (and ongoing) financial crisis, and continue to be made. Where people leave or retire from a post, they are not generally renewed or readvertised, and new positions are very rarely being made. Especially, it seems, in the sciences. This may just be my bias because I pay more attention to what's going on the the world of science, but I'm not convinced. While science curatorships are cut, positions in the arts are still being advertised. Which doesn't surprise me, because while the general public is not as interested in art (see my post from a while ago discussing the results of a Museums Association survey on this topic), it is the art supporters that bring in the most money to museums.
So where does this leave our current trainees and interns? Sadly, I suspect it will leave them in the same position as me in a year or two - unemployed and bitter at the injustice of the world, with no use for their new-found knowledge and skills except to volunteer at their local museum, which will probably by then be run by an army of volunteers as the paid staff find themselves victims of yet more cut-backs. Ah, the Big Society at work.
Hey-ho. Actually, this week I've found a few jobs to apply for (some of which I'm actually qualified for!), and I've just applied for a job in the States, where the global financial fucktastrophe doesn't seem to have hit museums quite so hard. Fingers crossed!
Monday, 7 February 2011
Rabbits, Revulsion, & Repetition
There is always a certain element of worry involved when running a public event using handling objects. First, obviously, that the precious museum objects will be damaged, but there is also a concern over how people will react to them. Especially when using dead animals. Some people can find stuffed animals quite upsetting, and there is always a percentage of the audience that is just repulsed by wet-preserved specimens. But I have usually found that, the more worrisome we think a specimen is, the cooler children think it is. A good example would be the freeze-dried week-old baby rabbit that we (when I say "we" I mostly mean the biology curator. I'm just a volunteer!) used in a museum event in Bristol yesterday to celebrate the Chinese New Year (it's the Year of the Rabbit, in case you hadn't heard!). It is a cute little blighter, all curled up with its eyes closed almost as if it could be sleeping, but I'll admit there was a little curatorial worry that it might be a step too far. We were using a couple of stuffed adult rabbits, but dead baby animals are always a more tragic sight, and we debated whether we should actually have the kit on display. We needn't have worried at all: some adults found it mildly disturbing, but most children wanted to cuddle it and take it home! They were picking it up without a second thought, often to slightly queasy expressions from their parents, even after being told that it was a real dead rabbit. Their curiosity, and innate attraction to all things cute and fluffy, outweighed any worries they had about touching a dead thing. And of course the younger ones just thought it was sleeping. Aren't children wonderful?
The event seemed to be a huge success, judging by the number of people there, and now there are dozens (possibly even hundreds!) of Bristolian children who should be able to tell the difference between a rabbit and a hare (hares are larger, with longer ears, live solitarily above ground, and produce precocial (well-developed at birth) young rather than altricial (blind, naked and ugly!) young like rabbits), and between a rabbit and a rodent (lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) have 2 extra dinky teeth behind the top incisors, which rodents lack (anyone know why they have them? Wikipedia wasn't able to tell me that!)). I lost count of the amount of times I recited those nuggets of information to people, but that is the nature of public events: there is always an inevitable amount of repetition involved, because people want to know the important things. It did mean that my more interesting rabbit facts (well, I thought they were interesting!), such as that rabbits can only breathe though their nose and are incapable of vomiting, went unused, but you can't have everything I suppose!
The event seemed to be a huge success, judging by the number of people there, and now there are dozens (possibly even hundreds!) of Bristolian children who should be able to tell the difference between a rabbit and a hare (hares are larger, with longer ears, live solitarily above ground, and produce precocial (well-developed at birth) young rather than altricial (blind, naked and ugly!) young like rabbits), and between a rabbit and a rodent (lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) have 2 extra dinky teeth behind the top incisors, which rodents lack (anyone know why they have them? Wikipedia wasn't able to tell me that!)). I lost count of the amount of times I recited those nuggets of information to people, but that is the nature of public events: there is always an inevitable amount of repetition involved, because people want to know the important things. It did mean that my more interesting rabbit facts (well, I thought they were interesting!), such as that rabbits can only breathe though their nose and are incapable of vomiting, went unused, but you can't have everything I suppose!
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Goodbye old Scotland, all covered in snow...
You may have noticed that I've not posted in a while, and that's because I've been too busy couch-surfing these last few weeks! My contract in Glasgow finished at the end of November, and I've since moved back down to sunny Somerset while I hunt for another job. But I thought I should write one last post about Glasgow, to try and sum up my wonderful museum experiences there...
I was thinking earlier about how much I've learned in the last few years, and this last year especially, about working in museums, and how far I've come since I first interviewed for a museum job 3 years ago (and embarassed myself horribly, I'm ashamed to admit - at that point I was in no way qualified for the job at hand!). I first started volunteering at my local museum because I didn't know what else to do with degrees in Zoology and Palaeobiology...I had to some extent educated myself into unemployability. Except in the fields I wanted to be in of course, because I lacked a PhD. So I started helping out at the museum for something to pass the time. And quickly fell in love with the place. It's a little hard to explain sometimes why I love what I do...I guess it always is with these things: if the person you're talking to doesn't share your interest, then it's hard for them to understand it. But I enjoy cataloguing and photographing and cleaning specimens, and knowing that with any luck my care will mean that the specimens will survive, complete with useful information, for many years, to be studied and cared for by future generations of nerdy museum people. And I love learning about the specimens. Just through documenting the mammal collections in my former museum I learned a huge amount about them, and their history, because I had to cross-reference old catalogue records, and perform endless internet and book searches to identify species that had been labelled wrongly or had been accessioned under old defunct names. And I love the physicality of the work, and the fact that there are so many different things to do - in one day I could be painting a specimen's stand, then cleaning a skeleton, feeding the live animals, putting some bird nests in the freezer and processing the ones that have come out, pinning insects...it would leave me exhausted at the end of a day, but immensely satisfied!
And from my wonderful experiences over the last few years, through volunteering and working with some lovely, patient, instructive curators, I think I have become a competent natural history curator myself. There is still a lot I can learn about collections care and conservation, and I can't wait to learn it, but I am no longer the terrified, unconfident girl who ummed and ahhhed her way through that interview 3 years ago. And hopefully I'll find a new position soon, because I can't imagine giving up on this career that I love and going back to a normal job. That would be far too boring!
I was thinking earlier about how much I've learned in the last few years, and this last year especially, about working in museums, and how far I've come since I first interviewed for a museum job 3 years ago (and embarassed myself horribly, I'm ashamed to admit - at that point I was in no way qualified for the job at hand!). I first started volunteering at my local museum because I didn't know what else to do with degrees in Zoology and Palaeobiology...I had to some extent educated myself into unemployability. Except in the fields I wanted to be in of course, because I lacked a PhD. So I started helping out at the museum for something to pass the time. And quickly fell in love with the place. It's a little hard to explain sometimes why I love what I do...I guess it always is with these things: if the person you're talking to doesn't share your interest, then it's hard for them to understand it. But I enjoy cataloguing and photographing and cleaning specimens, and knowing that with any luck my care will mean that the specimens will survive, complete with useful information, for many years, to be studied and cared for by future generations of nerdy museum people. And I love learning about the specimens. Just through documenting the mammal collections in my former museum I learned a huge amount about them, and their history, because I had to cross-reference old catalogue records, and perform endless internet and book searches to identify species that had been labelled wrongly or had been accessioned under old defunct names. And I love the physicality of the work, and the fact that there are so many different things to do - in one day I could be painting a specimen's stand, then cleaning a skeleton, feeding the live animals, putting some bird nests in the freezer and processing the ones that have come out, pinning insects...it would leave me exhausted at the end of a day, but immensely satisfied!
And from my wonderful experiences over the last few years, through volunteering and working with some lovely, patient, instructive curators, I think I have become a competent natural history curator myself. There is still a lot I can learn about collections care and conservation, and I can't wait to learn it, but I am no longer the terrified, unconfident girl who ummed and ahhhed her way through that interview 3 years ago. And hopefully I'll find a new position soon, because I can't imagine giving up on this career that I love and going back to a normal job. That would be far too boring!
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Gideon Mantell: Pioneer of Palaentology
Since the blog's been a bit quiet lately, and I have little that is new and interesting to write about at the moment, here is a lazy post consisting of a transcript (with some minor editing and additions, and obviously much of the show-and-tell aspect removed!) of the talk I gave at the museum a few months ago about Gideon Mantell. Enjoy!
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Gideon Algernon Mantell was a county doctor with a practice in his hometown of Lewes, Sussex, where he was born in 1790. He was an excellent surgeon and midwife...at a time when up to 1 in 30 women died in childbirth in hospitals, Mantell lost only 2 patients in over 2000 births.
He was also passionate about the infant science of geology, having collected rocks and fossils from local quarries since he was a boy. At this time geology really was a very new science: it was only in 1654 that Archbishop Ussher used the chronology of the bible to date the creation of the world to the night before 23rd Oct 4004BC, and this was for at least the next hundred years the prevailing view. It was only in the late 18th/early 19th century that people really began studying the rock strata, and realising that they must have taken much more than 6000 years to form (although they had no way of dating the rocks at all, since carbon dating wouldn’t be discovered for a couple of hundred years!).
Mantell acquired a huge fossil collection, largely relying on local quarrymen, who he paid to provide him with material. But after the publication of his first book on the Geology of Sussex word started to get around of the fabulous bones to be found in the Tilgate Forest quarries, and he suddenly had competition for specimens. He was much vexed when a local amateur collector began outbidding him for fossils, writing in his journal, “…Drove to Cuckfield, and endeavoured to obtain some fossils from the quarrymen who have been employed by me so many years; but the ungrateful scoundrels refused to let me have one, having found a customer on the spot…It is after all a very cruel affair: when there are thousands of quarries in England which would be equally productive and interesting if persons would but take the trouble to explore them, I must be robbed of the fruits of my industry and trouble!...”.
For many years Mantell was a successful doctor but a struggling amateur geologist; even after the publication of his first book he still struggled to gain recognition from the big names in the field. But amongst his collection he had pieces of bone from impossibly large extinct creatures, which he correctly recognised as reptiles. He took a tooth of one of these creatures to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The curator there showed him an iguana that had recently been brought back from the West Indies, and Mantell was impressed with how similar in form the teeth were. The creature was named Iguanodon (meaning ‘iguana tooth’). As it happens, the comparison with iguanas was rather oversold, as the teeth are actually only very superficially similar (as the anatomist Richard Owen took great pleasure in pointing out some years later). But because of the name, at the time Iguanodon was reconstructed to look very much like a giant iguana (see below. Note that the limbs are correctly positioned underneath the body rather than splayed out like a crocodile, although despite the fact that Mantell noted that the forelimbs were shorter than the hindlimbs, this was not reflected in most reconstructions of his time. Also you’ll note the horn on its nose, which is now known to be a thumb spike. And yes, I know I've used this picture in my blog before. But I like it).
Iguanodon was only the second giant reptile to be discovered; the first was described by William Buckland (an eminent geologist) in 1824 and named Megalosaurus. Mantell only very narrowly missed out on naming the first dinosaur...Buckland had been sitting on a specimen of Megalosaurus at the Ashmolean Museum for some years, afraid to publish a ‘giant reptile’ for fear of ridicule, but Mantell’s discoveries spurred him into action and he rushed out a paper shortly before Mantell published his Iguanodon. Of course, when first described Iguanodon and Megalosaurus were not called dinosaurs, because that term hadn’t been invented yet. It wasn’t until 1842 that the term ‘dinosaur’ was coined by Richard Owen.
The discovery of Iguanodon made Mantell’s name as scientist, and he was admitted to the Royal Society on Dec 22nd 1825. He was very proud of this, writing in his journal “This day I went to London, and at 8 in the evening attended at Somerset House to be admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society...It is with no small degree of pleasure that I placed my name in the Charter book, which contained that of Sir Isaac Newton and so many eminent characters”.
Mantell later discovered the bones of other dinosaurs: the primitive ankylosaur Hylaeosaurus, stegosaur Regnosaurus (known only from jaw fragment discovered by Mantell, pelvic fragment from Isle of Wight), and sauropod Pelorosaurus (a genus with a very confused history, having been given many names by many different people over the years!). He also collected many other fossils including plants, turtles, and ammonites.
Mantell moved his family to fashionable Brighton in the 1830’s, hoping to find a patron who would provide money for further collecting and research. He now had recognition as a scientist, but had yet to make any money from it. He turned his house into a museum, which was made a Scientific Institution and opened to the public in 1836. But it was a commercial failure (partly because Mantell would often kindly waive the entrance fee), and the museum bankrupted him. It was closed only 2 years after it opened, and Mantell was forced to sell his entire collection to the British Museum for the paltry sum of £4000. After everything was moved to the BM, only Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus were put on display, to Mantell’s great disappointment.
The whole business of setting up a museum in their home, and then having it fail, was very stressful for his whole family, and it put a huge strain on Mantell’s marriage. Fed up of Gideon putting science above her needs, his wife finally left him in 1839.
Mantell spent the last decade of his life in a state of severe ill health. He thought he had a tumour on the spine caused by many years spent stooping over patients, but he in fact suffered from severe scoliosis (curvature of the spine), which left him partially paralysed, and may have been caused by a carriage accident in 1841. He continued to work during this time, visiting patients, conducting research, writing papers and books and giving lectures when he was well enough, but he was in constant pain, taking laudanum, aconite, ether, chloroform, opium etc. frequently (and often at the same time!) as painkillers. He died in 1852 of an opium overdose. At time of his death, Mantell was credited with the discovery of 4 out of 5 then known genera of dinosaur. After he died a portion of his curved spine was removed by Richard Owen and kept at Royal College of Surgeons (until 1969, when it was destroyed due to lack of space).
These days Gideon Mantell’s name is one that commands great respect among palaeontological and geological circles, but he went without the recognition he deserved for many years, both before and after his death, due at least in part to a vicious smear campaign by a rival of his, the much more famous Richard Owen (a superb anatomist known mainly as the founder of the Natural History Museum in London, and for overseeing the building of the dinosaur models in Crystal Palace Park (a commission originally offered to Mantell, who turned it down due to ill health). If you’ve seen these fantastic models, you’ll know they’re hilariously inaccurate, but they were the best guesses based on the fossils that had been found at the time. They’re also now grade I listed buildings!).
Richard Owen was a very ambitious man, who was determined to be the most famous name in palaeontology. He had no qualms about sabotaging the careers of others to make this happen, and Mantell was just one of his victims. After Mantell’s death, an obituary was published in which he was rubbished as a poor scientist with an overinflated ego, and in which the discovery of Iguanodon was completely taken away from him and attributed to several other scientists, including Richard Owen. It was published anonymously, but it was widely believed to be the handiwork of Owen, an attempt to bury Mantell’s reputation with him.
Owen’s ruthlessness eventually caught up with him, though, and he was denied the presidency of the Royal Society due to his ill-treatment of Mantell over the years, and was eventually voted off the councils of the Royal and Zoological societies, and the Royal College of Surgeons, over other scandals (including stealing other people’s work and publishing it as his own). In later years he was overtaken scientifically, as evolutionary theory developed and his ideas became outdated. Even the Natural History Museum, built as a temple to the wonders of God’s creation, was hijacked by Darwin and his bulldog Huxley, and it has become a temple to evolution.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Dugong, dugong, it's the cow of the sea-e-e...
...but not, as the song goes, also known as the manatee. If you have no clue to which song I am referring, it is this little slice of awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXm1ICO8Nec
Dugongs and manatees are actually entirely different creatures, in different Families (Dugongidae and Trichechidae, respectively). And the dolphin is quite a distant cousin actually, not very close - the Sirenia (the Order to which both dugongs and manatees belong) is most closely related to the Proboscidea (elephants) and Hyracoidea (hyraxes). But only very distantly related to the Cetacea (whales and dolphins).
However, it still remains a great song. And it IS known as the cow of the sea (e-e)! So they got something right!
So, why all this talk of dugongs anyway? Well, friends, because I was cleaning one this afternoon! Another week in Zoology, lots more work done! All of the mammal material on display is now catalogued to computer (with beautiful colour photos and everything!), and much cleaner! I have dusted a dugong and hoovered an elephant skull today! Along with many other bits and pieces (including a dolphin skeleton, model porpoise, walrus skull, and a variety of antelope mounts). I feel like I am now made of dust! I suspect I'll be sneezing it up for days! I still feel like I'm covered in it, even though I had a thorough shower as soon as I got home!
What a busy little beaver I've been! Unfortunately, next week I have to go back to my day job. Not that I don't adore my day job, and after all this it'll be positively relaxing, but I have had a lot of fun in the Zoology department. And gained a lot of good experience to put on my CV, too! Bonus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXm1ICO8Nec
Dugongs and manatees are actually entirely different creatures, in different Families (Dugongidae and Trichechidae, respectively). And the dolphin is quite a distant cousin actually, not very close - the Sirenia (the Order to which both dugongs and manatees belong) is most closely related to the Proboscidea (elephants) and Hyracoidea (hyraxes). But only very distantly related to the Cetacea (whales and dolphins).
However, it still remains a great song. And it IS known as the cow of the sea (e-e)! So they got something right!
So, why all this talk of dugongs anyway? Well, friends, because I was cleaning one this afternoon! Another week in Zoology, lots more work done! All of the mammal material on display is now catalogued to computer (with beautiful colour photos and everything!), and much cleaner! I have dusted a dugong and hoovered an elephant skull today! Along with many other bits and pieces (including a dolphin skeleton, model porpoise, walrus skull, and a variety of antelope mounts). I feel like I am now made of dust! I suspect I'll be sneezing it up for days! I still feel like I'm covered in it, even though I had a thorough shower as soon as I got home!
What a busy little beaver I've been! Unfortunately, next week I have to go back to my day job. Not that I don't adore my day job, and after all this it'll be positively relaxing, but I have had a lot of fun in the Zoology department. And gained a lot of good experience to put on my CV, too! Bonus.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Watching The Detectives
I love a good mystery, and working in a museum gives you plenty of them. While trying to electronically catalogue the taxidermied items on display in the Zoology Museum, this week I have come across a couple already, including a black-gloved wallaby that doesn't look like a black-gloved wallaby (it lacks all the characteristic features of the species, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that it's a very old specimen and quite faded. I'm trusting that the person who collected it knew a black-gloved wallaby when they saw one - they are quite distinctive!), and a tree shrew that still has me a little baffled!
It is named on its old catalogue card as Tupaia chrysoptera from Malaya (although its display label rather more cautiously has it as 'Tupaia ?chrysoptera'), a species which, as far as I can discover, does not and never has existed. It is not a synonym for any species of tree shrew. And the even older accessions register doesn't help, because while the card catalogue does give an accession number, there is no tree shrew listed in said accession record. Arrgh. So I have been trying to visually identify it, which is not easy on a slightly balding early 1900s taxidermy specimen housed in a large locked glass-fronted display case that won't unlock!
The closest existing name to it is T. chrysogaster, but Google Images couldn't find one of these, and neither could I find a written description, so I cannot compare!
The specimen's only distinctive feature is that it has a dark stripe running down its back, which, as far as my internet searching could tell me, narrows it down to one of two species: T. tana or T. picta. But there is very little information on either of these two on the 'net, or even tree shrews in general. So I might be wrong. I'm not helped by the fact that all tree shrews basically look the damned same!
I'll have to take a trip to the uni library tomorrow. This is one instance where the internet just can't cut it! Books are still useful sometimes. I refuse to be defeated by a dead tree shrew!
It is named on its old catalogue card as Tupaia chrysoptera from Malaya (although its display label rather more cautiously has it as 'Tupaia ?chrysoptera'), a species which, as far as I can discover, does not and never has existed. It is not a synonym for any species of tree shrew. And the even older accessions register doesn't help, because while the card catalogue does give an accession number, there is no tree shrew listed in said accession record. Arrgh. So I have been trying to visually identify it, which is not easy on a slightly balding early 1900s taxidermy specimen housed in a large locked glass-fronted display case that won't unlock!
The closest existing name to it is T. chrysogaster, but Google Images couldn't find one of these, and neither could I find a written description, so I cannot compare!
The specimen's only distinctive feature is that it has a dark stripe running down its back, which, as far as my internet searching could tell me, narrows it down to one of two species: T. tana or T. picta. But there is very little information on either of these two on the 'net, or even tree shrews in general. So I might be wrong. I'm not helped by the fact that all tree shrews basically look the damned same!
I'll have to take a trip to the uni library tomorrow. This is one instance where the internet just can't cut it! Books are still useful sometimes. I refuse to be defeated by a dead tree shrew!
Friday, 3 September 2010
Things I've learned working in a museum (part VII)
How to clean an halibut skeleton...
This is a delicate procedure, requiring several paintbrushes of varying size and softness, and a conservation hoover with a long, narrow, flexible attachment (for getting into those hard-to-reach places under the fish's head, fins, and ribs). And also glue, for reattaching those bits that inevitably fall off as soon as you touch them (not my fault - it's a very old, greasy, and fragile specimen!). Et voila! Your halibut is good as new, and ready for re-hanging on the wall.
Yes, folks, it's been a weird week. Spent mostly photographing and editing photos of the museum's displays (lots of them. I took over 600 photos in the end! Some of them re-takes of shots that came out blurry, but that's still a lot of editing!). I have also labelled, bagged and sealed dozens of bird nests and insect store boxes, cleaned an halibut skeleton, written a new label for the halibut skeleton, cleaned the finger smears off the glass tops of the insect display cases, fed the frogs, bearded dragon, millipede and harvest mice...and slept. A lot. It's been tiring! But fun. I may have been so exhausted that I crashed out on the sofa as soon as I got home a couple of nights this week, but at least it was a satisfied 'job well done' sort of exhausted! It's a good feeling to get done in two-and-a-half days things that the curators have wanted done for the last two years! Even if editing photos is a bloody pain in the arse. Not to mention the back, shoulders, and eyes! Staring at a computer screen all day is really not good for you at all! Which is why of course I'm now sitting at home staring at a computer screen, telling you how much I hate staring at computer screens. *Sigh*.
This is a delicate procedure, requiring several paintbrushes of varying size and softness, and a conservation hoover with a long, narrow, flexible attachment (for getting into those hard-to-reach places under the fish's head, fins, and ribs). And also glue, for reattaching those bits that inevitably fall off as soon as you touch them (not my fault - it's a very old, greasy, and fragile specimen!). Et voila! Your halibut is good as new, and ready for re-hanging on the wall.
Yes, folks, it's been a weird week. Spent mostly photographing and editing photos of the museum's displays (lots of them. I took over 600 photos in the end! Some of them re-takes of shots that came out blurry, but that's still a lot of editing!). I have also labelled, bagged and sealed dozens of bird nests and insect store boxes, cleaned an halibut skeleton, written a new label for the halibut skeleton, cleaned the finger smears off the glass tops of the insect display cases, fed the frogs, bearded dragon, millipede and harvest mice...and slept. A lot. It's been tiring! But fun. I may have been so exhausted that I crashed out on the sofa as soon as I got home a couple of nights this week, but at least it was a satisfied 'job well done' sort of exhausted! It's a good feeling to get done in two-and-a-half days things that the curators have wanted done for the last two years! Even if editing photos is a bloody pain in the arse. Not to mention the back, shoulders, and eyes! Staring at a computer screen all day is really not good for you at all! Which is why of course I'm now sitting at home staring at a computer screen, telling you how much I hate staring at computer screens. *Sigh*.
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