This week , we interrupt UAMN Ornithology Collection Manager, Jack Withrow, as he installs a small exhibit on the Birds of Beringia. This is the latest edition of Changing Alaska, Changing Collections, a temporary exhibit case near the entrance of the main gallery that highlights recent work from the museum’s collections.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
This week , we interrupt UAMN Ornithology Collection Manager, Jack Withrow, as he installs a small exhibit on the Birds of Beringia. This is the latest edition of Changing Alaska, Changing Collections, a temporary exhibit case near the entrance of the main gallery that highlights recent work from the museum’s collections.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
Jonah Wright:
Good enough to hold a cabinet up. Good enough to hold the birds.
Roger Topp:
Hello, and welcome to The More You Look: Up Close, a short, unscheduled stop on your behind the scenes journey into museum collections, research, exhibits, and public programming. I'm Roger Topp, Director of Exhibits Design and Digital Media at the UA Museum of the North and today's host. This morning we are with ornithology collections manager Jack Withrow and interrupt him as he installs the latest edition of Changing Alaska, Changing Collections near the entrance of the museum's main gallery. So I'm here with Jack Withrow and we're installing a new temporary exhibit in the Changing Alaska, Changing Collections case. And this is on the Birds of Beringia.
Jack Withrow:
Yes. Birds of Beringia grew out of a synthesis paper that Kevin Winker and Dan Gibson and I worked on for awhile-- long before I was even here--decades and decades of work that we have done and others have done on the birds of Beringia and how Beringia shapes avian diversity in Alaska and basically the North Pacific writ large. Yeah.
Roger Topp:
And it's quite, quite loud in the gallery at the moment. We got to school tours moving through. Kind of nice. Maybe some of the folks can see what you just put in here. So what are the birds we're looking at, in this case?
Jack Withrow:
The big one is a Emperor Goose, which is endemic to Beringia--nests on the YK Delta and parts of the Chucotka Peninsula, maybe the Seward Peninsula, and then spends its winter basically in the Aleutian Islands but also goes east to Kodiak Island. It's one of the bigger, more charismatic endemics to basically Alaska or Beringia. The shorebird with a long bill is a Bristle-Thighed Curlew. It's also endemic to Beringia as a nesting bird. It breeds only on the Seward Peninsula and Nulato Hills in Alaska. And it spends its winter--like a lot of us wish we could--in the South Pacific. Flies direct from Alaska to islands in the South Pacific, mostly south of Hawaii. So, it makes a several 1,000 kilometer direct flight Yeah, in the fall and then again in the spring.
Roger Topp:
We have a great map here of Beringia with Alaska and Chukotka on either side. But of course, what the map doesn't show you is the huge expanse of Pacific Ocean to the south of this there. Do all these birds go--or just a couple of these birds go--maybe just the--
Jack Withrow:
Well in this display just the Curlew, but they're Bar-tailed Godwits, Arctic Terns--there's a lot of birds that traverse the Pacific in one way or another in Alaska, mostly shorebirds. But there are a few others as well. And a lot
Roger Topp:
And there was an episode--I'm talking with you of the birds-- alot of the seabirds that nest around New Zealand and Australia come up here for our summer. And so they're kind of doing the same thing in reverse using the rich waters in the Aleutians and the North Pacific to come up and feed in the summer and then go back for their breeding season. and Kevin about birds in general. And one of the things we talked about in that episode, which we'll be airing here soon, is the difference between live mounts, and study specimens. We have some song sparrows, which looked to me like they're the latter case.
Jack Withrow:
Yes, those song sparrows, the ptarmigan, are scientific studies scans. There's not a huge difference. The mounts obviously have been--we've spent a little more time with them and give them cotton eyeballs--instead of cotton eyeballs, they get glass eyeballs. They're wired up so that they can be in a little bit more lifelike position, whereas the scientific study skins are in a sort of stylized position on their back, and they take up much less room in their trays. That way they don't roll around if you do them right. So, there's a lot of similarities in there, but there's a few key differences. Neither one of them needs any sort of preservative.
Roger Topp:
The Rock Ptarmigan are also study skins. We've turned them over on their front so you can see the--
Jack Withrow:
See their backs. Yeah, those are three distinct subspecies that occur in the Aleutians, in the rest of Alaska. There's a fair number of birds that show subspecific diversity within the Aleutians. The Aleutians were a refuge--refugium back during the glacial cycles.
Roger Topp:
Did you do most of this mounting?
Jack Withrow:
Actually didn't do any of these. Chris Dao, who is a USGS biologist down in Anchorage did the Emperor Goose and then Henry Springer did the Bristle-Thighed Curlew. They were both done long ago for other purposes, and we're repurposing them.
Roger Topp:
And the study skins--who knows right? Could have been--
Jack Withrow:
Oh, I can tell you exactly who prepped them and who collected them, but I'd have to look at the labels. We have many preparers and many collectors represented in the collection. So you'd have to look at the labels.
Roger Topp:
So, there's an array of birds here. What birds didn't you pick, and why these birds and on why not other birds?
Jack Withrow:
Well, there's--as we outlined in the paper and some of the other stuff here, there's lots of things that are endemic to Alaska. But these are some of the more iconic ones. These are some of the subspecies that look more--not also species or things lend themselves away to an exhibit because they're subtle. The ptarmigan are less subtle than some. And the two mounts are just sort of classic, endemic birds to tBeringia. So there are other things that we could have picked. But we also had the mounts of these. Some of it is practical, and some of it is the desire to show exactly what you want.
Roger Topp:
The paper is accessible. You can you can go read the paper, if you so wish. An overview paper, for which people can then dive into more
Jack Withrow:
Yes, it's a meta-paper where you weave--it's a survey of all of the research that has been done on this system. And so, while it doesn't necessarily present new data, detail in different areas. it's--I would call it a synthesis paper, I guess, about divergence in birds in this region of the Exactly. It is technical. It has lots of lists, but it is it does summarize the last 100 years of research on Beringia.
Roger Topp:
I think one of the things we're real happy about this particular case is we plan is to rotate it every few months, with different collections showing either new research or new ideas that we haven't had a chance to put into a different exhibit. And so in this case, it's a great example of exhibit which you did the layout, for the bird collection. You built the shelves. I think we just helped with finding a good map for it.
Jack Withrow:
Yeah, and layout and printing it, putting it on there. I mean, yeah, it's a collaborative effort as the paper's collaborative--everything about this is collaborative.
Roger Topp:
It's wonderful and it's a really pretty case. So hopefully people get a chance to see it. This should be up at least into May, if not through May.
Jack Withrow:
Keep an eye on the case and I'm sure it will change.
Roger Topp:
And we're working with Mallory already on a genetics component.
Jack Withrow:
When it comes back to us, we'll put something else bird related in it.
Roger Topp:
Because-- More birds in the collection is there?
Jack Withrow:
Oh, yes.
Roger Topp:
Okay. I was just listening to the interview we did with you and Kevin and one of the questions that came up for me there was--what else you want to put on exhibit. I think Kevin said that we need to do more to show birds that birders want to see.
Jack Withrow:
Well, these two. okay for him to do that. I mean, depending on how-- Yeah, these two are both highly sought after.
Roger Topp:
These are birders birds?
Jack Withrow:
These two, yeah. Song sparrows not so much. I mean, it depends on how interested you are. This song sparrow and even to some extent this one look nothing like the songsparrows you're gonna see down in the lower 48. And same with some of the ptarmigan, but I don't know if people spend a lot of money to go see different subspecies. It tends to be a species level tick that people are looking for, but yeah I'm I'm making generalizations that are--but yeah, absolutely two of these are definitely birders birds.
Roger Topp:
So, already already tackling some of that which we thought we should dig into. All right. Thank you very much, Jack. Appreciate your time.
Jack Withrow:
Yeah. Any time.
Jonah Wright:
It's just--they go away. I love it.
Tamara Martz:
There's no bird sitting right there, so painting it out would be good.
Cindy Hickman:
That was all a conincedence --spray painting--
Jonah Wright:
A very good coincedence. All right, looks good. Nice! Everything came together.
Roger Topp:
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum or the North on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dene people of the Lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe and share and rate the program. This helps other listeners discover more about not only the work of this museum, but quite possibly other museums in their neighborhoods. The more you look, the more you find.