Andreas Jonsson's Weblog

Adult Yellow-nosed Albatross at the Royal Ontario Museum

Last week our banding leader Brett Tryon had arranged with Mark Peck of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for the TTPBRS volunteers to spend some time at the ROM ornithological archives so that we could practice our identification skills for he upcoming banding season.

The archive contains some 140.000 bird specimens, making the ROM collection the 11th biggest collection in North America. There hasn’t been any active collection since 1986, but the museum still accept donations.

Two of the more spectacular birds added to the collection last year were an adult Yellow-nosed Albatross and a juvenile Northern Gannet. Both species are pelagic, and extremely rare on the Great Lakes. The albatross was first seen in July 2010 in Kingston on eastern Lake Ontario and later found in weak condition near Wolfe Island. It was taken to a rehabilitation centre and later died. The gannet flew into a truck on Highway 2 east of Toronto in November 2010.

Mark Peck displays the Yellow-nosed Albatross

Adult Yellow-nosed Albatross

Yellow-nosed Albatross label

Mark Peck displays the juvenile Northern Gannet

The collection’s most valuable items are kept in a special (locked) cabinet. There are specimens of many extinct species, including Great Auk, Eskimo Curlew, Carolina Parakeet, Bachman’s Warbler and this beautiful male Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Mark Peck displays a male Ivory-billed Woodpecker (extinct)

It a pretty sad feeling hold a specimen of an extinct species, here a male Passenger Pigeon. Enormous flocks of this species counting millions of birds could be seen in southern Ontario in the late 1800′s.

Male Passenger Pigeon (extinct)

Passenger Pigeon label

We got to practice our identification skills on wood warblers, thrushes, sparrows and flycatchers. More on that in another post.

From top to bottom: sparrows, thrushes, wood warblers...

... and volunteers.

We also had the opportunity to look around and study pretty much anything that would interest us in the collection. I had a look at the extensive shore bird collection.

The bird collection is stored in rows and rows of cabinets

Specimens are stored in cabinets like this one

Mark Peck has done extensive research on the rufa subspecies of the Red Knot, breeding in Hudson Bay.

Collection of Red Knots, rufa subspecies

Red Knot, rufa subspecies. Left: Non-breeding plumage; Middle and right: Breeding Plumage

Time passed quickly and it felt like the afternoon visit came to and end much too soon. Luckily I may return in May again for the Toronto Ornithological Club “new members night”. I hope to post another set of posts of similar looking species, and some more interesting shorebirds shortly.

Edit: See my other posts from the ROM: Spoon-billed Sandpipers at the Royal Ontario Museum, Side by Side Comparison of Empidonax Flycatchers, Comparison of Mourning Warbler and MacGillivray’s Warbler, Comparison of North American Spotted Thrushes, and Comparison of Northern Waterthrush and Louisiana Waterthrush.