Field Museum of Natural History - Birds (FMNH-Birds)

The Division of Birds houses the third largest scientific bird collection in the United States. The main collection contains over 480,000 specimens, including 600 holotypes, 70,000 skeletons, and 7,000 fluid specimens. In addition, the division houses 21,000 egg sets and 200 nests. The scope of the collection is world-wide; all bird families but one are represented, as are 90% of the world's genera and species. Included among its many historically and scientifically valuable individual collections are the H. B. Conover Game Bird Collection, Good's and Van Someren's African collections, C. B. Cory's West Indian collection, the Bishop Collection of North American birds, a large portion of W. Koelz's material from India and the Middle East, and many separate collections from South America, Africa (Hoogstraal from Egypt) and the Philippines (Rabor).

Technology Liaison to Science: Sharon Grant, sgrant@fieldmuseum.org
Collection Type: Preserved Specimens
Management: Data snapshot of local collection database
Last Update: 24 November 2023
IPT / DwC-A Source:
FMNHBirds-DwC-import-2023
Digital Metadata: EML File
Rights Holder: Field Museum of Natural History
Cite this collection:
Field Museum of Natural History - Birds. Occurrence dataset (ID: 23fb5254-7879-4a8f-bd20-f18ceead9c15) accessed via the New Brunswick Museum Collections Portal, /portal, 2024-05-03).
Collection Statistics
  • 158 specimen records
  • 150 (95%) georeferenced
  • 2 (1%) with images (4 total images)
  • 157 (99%) identified to species
  • 18 families
  • 33 genera
  • 20 species
  • 49 total taxa (including subsp. and var.)
Extra Statistics
Show Geographic Distribution
Show Family Distribution