Blog

September 12, 2024

Falling Leaves, Falling Feathers: How Birds Create Colors

Fall and the changing colors of leaves are so tied together, that there’s a good chance that the mere word “autumn” likely conjures a palette of orange, reds, and yellows. But the plants aren’t the only ones that shift into different hues as the temperature drops. Birds too will change colors as their now worn-out and damaged summer feathers drop off and are replaced by their (often less colorful) winter plumage. And while the color-changing properties of leaves come from chlorophyll breaking down and revealing the warmer pigments below, things get a little more complicated when we start talking about feathers. For starters, the colors we see when we look at a bird are not all due to pigments. Some colors are due to the microscopic structure of the feather itself, and these structures can even produce a shimmering iridescence. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with something a little more relatable to us humans.

June 15, 2024

The Process of Taxidermy

Content Warning: The following blog post contains imagery and descriptions of specimen preparation. Did you know that not only are all of the animals on display at the Nature Museum real, but the steps involved in their preparation have been more or less the same for hundreds of years? Despite changing opinions on chemical preservatives, the process you can see happening today in the Beecher Lab would have happened in much the same way when our earliest specimens were being prepared for the collection.

May 7, 2024

Deciphering Handwriting on Botanic Labels

As a collections intern, I contributed to the ongoing process of digitizing the museum’s botanical specimens. This consisted of cataloging each specimen into the online collection system Arctos, creating labels for them, scanning them, and integrating them into the museum’s greater collection. Part of the digitizing process is reading the handwritten labels that go along with each plant. This step is essential as all of the information about the specimens are recorded on the collectors’ labels. The purpose of the digitizing project is to make specimen information accessible and organized within a database, so the label information must be accurately portrayed. This project is crucial in increasing the accessibility of specimen data and provides incredible value to those inside and outside of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum communities. A majority of the specimens I worked with were from the 1800s when cursive handwriting was more ubiquitous than it is today. During the 19th century, there were various styles of penmanship being taught and used for different purposes. The Spencerian method was being taught in schools, while Roundhand was used more artistically. Fairhand was also used in more professional settings to maintain a standard style of writing before typewriters were used. With the botany labels that I worked with, their script was likely a mixture of Fairhand and personal writing styles. The collectors were the ones writing these labels, but the labels were ultimately used for scientific purposes. With the shift to text and print in the 1900s, reading handwriting is an increasingly difficult task. Reading the labels was challenging for myself at the beginning of my internship. As I studied them, I felt like I was a detective deciphering a hidden code made of loopy pen strokes. It was frustrating to decode handwriting that didn’t even resemble words at points, but the satisfaction of solving each puzzle was so rewarding. By the end of my time at the museum, reading the labels became one of my favorite parts of working with the pressed plant specimens. I became familiar with the way collectors wrote each letter and how their words strung together. Reading each label strengthened a kind of one-sided intimacy between myself and these collectors from centuries ago. My mind often ended up wandering while doing some of the more tedious tasks like attaching both the original and the transcribed labels to the botany mounting sheets for each pressed plant. I would think about who these collectors were, what their experiences were like in the field gathering specimens, how they identified each plant, and what they were going through while writing each label. Sometimes, I could tell when the collectors were in more of a rush to write; words would be misspelled, species names would dissipate into squiggles instead of letters, i’s would be missing dots, t’s would be crossless. However, I could also see when collectors had the time to be more meticulous with their penmanship. Each letter was defined, and some swoops resembled calligraphy. These examples of handwriting gave me a greater appreciation for the time it took to write information down as opposed to the convenience of our current digital age. One collector’s handwriting that I became very familiar with was Henry Holmes Babcock. During his lifetime from 1832 to 1881, this botanist collected around 10,000 specimens in Illinois. He was involved with various local institutions, including the Chicago Botanic Garden, Northwestern University, and Chicago Academy of Sciences. Some of the specimens that I worked on cataloging were from his exchange with the Herbarium Horti Botanici Pisani, known as the Herbarium of the University of Pisa currently located in its Botanic Garden. Although he didn’t collect these specimens, he received them in exchange for his Illinois specimens and wrote labels for them. Becoming familiar with Babcock’s handwriting is a way to get to know him as there is so little information available about him as a person. Handwriting is such a unique aspect to every individual, and part of his legacy exists within these labels. I want to highlight some examples of specimens that were the most difficult to decipher, but also ones that were the most pleasing to look at.An example of an uppercase Q: 1873.48.590 This one took me a substantial amount of time to decipher. The species name reads “Quercus pedunculata,” which is a type of oak tree. Trying to read the uppercase Q was difficult, mostly because of how rare it is and how much I thought it resembled the letter D. But figuring out what this label said was one of the most satisfying moments of my internship.

April 25, 2024

Inspiring Nature Champions

We stand at the forefront of conservation research, protecting our local wildlife. We’re historians, preserving the collective memory of nature in our region for generations to come. We’re scientists, dedicated to the welfare of our imperiled species and working to bolster their populations. We’re specialists, implementing education programs to reach the next class of nature champions. We’re storytellers, crafting captivating exhibits that immerse and inspire tomorrow’s stewards. Our mission resonates across all generations and our refreshed identity reflects that growth.

August 30, 2023

Digitizing Motion Picture Films in the Collection

Work in the Collections Department is very much “behind the scenes” and ongoing. Our Collections staff diligently catalogues and preserves the objects and information in our diverse collection and works to make it available to a range of users including scholars, artists, students, teachers, museum professionals, wildlife organizations, government agencies, and community scientists. Some of the collections remain hidden until we can apply specialized methods of making them usable. Motion picture film collections are one of these types of collections. Motion picture films are fragile and the physical films are not usable through standard projectors. To make their content viewable, the fragile media must be digitally copied with specialized equipment and by those with particular expertise with the film medium.