Bird skeleton collections

Skeleton of captive scarlet macaw, Ara macao, added to the collections in 2011

Our bird skeleton collection, also called the avian osteology collection, is the largest of its kind in the UK. It contains around 16,600 specimens, including complete and partial skeletons and skulls.

Specimens
- 16,600

Strengths

The bird skeleton collection includes around 16,000 specimens, making it both the largest such collection in the UK, and one of the twenty largest such collections in the world.

It contains material from about 65 per cent of the world's bird genera and 33 per cent of all bird species.

Major collections

The skeleton collection includes some of the Museum's oldest and most famous specimens, including a number of domestic birds from the collections of Charles Darwin.

Two of our hornbill skulls were originally part of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), which formed the basis of the British Museum in 1753.

Subfossil material

In addition to our collection of modern birds, we also hold some Holocene subfossil material - including specimens from the Chatham Islands in New Zealand, some Atlantic islands and Puerto Rico - along with material of key taxa such as the dodo (Raphus cucullatus).

The Museum's main palaeontological bird collections, including moa and elephant birds, are held in the Department of Earth Sciences.

Drawers of great bittern Botaurus stellaris specimens in the skeleton collection
Fossil pigeon, identifying remains from a cave in Puerto Rico
Sternum of a stone curlew, Burhinus oedicnemus, badly affected by bone cancer
Pelecanus onocrotalus

A striking mounted specimen of a great white pelican, which has one of the most impressive skeletons of any bird
Domestic pigeon skeletons belonging to Charles Darwin’s, donated in 1867. Darwin’s handwriting is visible on the keel of the sternum.
Adult and larva forms of Dermestes haemarrhoidalis our hardworking beetle colonies. After this photo was taken they were returned to carry on eating.
Larva of the Dermestes beetle, one of our smallest employees