{"id":528,"date":"2015-06-24T22:02:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T22:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendarees.com\/?p=528"},"modified":"2015-10-31T22:29:13","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T22:29:13","slug":"occidental-college-laboratory-is-for-the-birds-all-65000-of-them-the-eastsider-la-april-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/?p=528","title":{"rendered":"Occidental College Laboratory is for the Birds \u2013 all 65,000 of Them, The Eastsider LA, April, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

EAGLE ROCK<\/strong> \u2014 Why would anyone want to spend Saturday (May 2) \u2013 the first-ever Bird LA Day<\/a> \u2013 inside an Occidental College laboratory looking through cabinets containing 65,000 dead birds? Answer: Because it\u2019s science and because it\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

The Moore Laboratory of Zoology<\/a> at Occidental College is participating in the birding festivities on Bird LA Day with public tours of its massive collection of avian specimens that run the gamut from the Cuban bee hummingbird\u00a0 (the smallest bird in the world) to the impressively large golden eagle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do benefits conservation of these species because basically you can\u2019t protect something [if] you don\u2019t know if it exists,\u201d said director and curator John McCormack.<\/p>\n

The lab, with the largest single collection of Mexican birds in the world, attracts researchers from all over the globe. Biology and grad students use the cotton-stuffed birds to study genetic traits, biology, etc.; art students also use specimens as models for sketching and inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things about natural history collections is that they are used in ways that the original collector never could have anticipated,\u201d McCormack said. \u201cThis bird,\u201d he said referring to a toucan, \u201cwas collected in 1929 \u2013 several decades before DNA was even discovered \u2013 and now we are able to sequence this bird\u2019s entire genome if we wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The specimens are stored in wooden trays packed into 111 large gray cabinets that have been around since the 1950s. From one of those gray cabinets, McCormack pulls out a wooden tray to reveal a sparkling rainbow of hummingbird specimens. Here\u2019s a sword-billed hummingbird, a giant hummingbird and, upon closer examination, a toothed hummingbird. \u201cIf you look under the microscope, it\u2019s terrifying,\u201d he says of the species that boasts a little hook and teeth.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

The specimens, some of which are more than a century old, are all simply preserved with cotton inside, which makes the birds easier to handle and measure. \u201cIf you keep them temperate controlled, you can keep them this way for 100 year or more,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The Moore Lab specimens were originally acquired and donated to the college in 1950 by Robert T. Moore, Pasadena businessman, adventurer, poet and ornithologist who was fascinated by new bird species and subspecies.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s Bird LA Day might be the last opportunity for the public to tour the lab and see the specimens in the vintage, wooden trays as the facility prepares for a renovation that could begin later this year<\/p>\n

What draws visitors to snoop into the lives of a research biologist?<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off, it\u2019s the beauty of birds,\u201d says McCormack. \u201cBut we try to teach them about the role of a natural history collection and the research we do here and why we have so many specimens and numbers of birds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Specimens<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hidden gems on the second floor of a secluded campus building. The cabinets are plain and ordinary on the outside, but once opened, they reveal birds of all shapes, sizes and colors. A rainbow of feathers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-the-eastsider-la","9":"post-with-thumbnail","10":"post-with-thumbnail-large"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendarees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}