Rediscovery of the syntypes of California Quail Tetrao californicus Shaw, 1798, and comments on the current labelling of the holotype of California Condor Vultur californianus Shaw, 1797

The two syntypes of California Quail Tetrao californicus Shaw, 1798, were deposited in the British Museum in the 1790s, but were last documented as present in the late 1860s and had subsequently been presumed no longer extant. In 2004, they were re-discovered in Notingham Natural History Museum, to which they must have been inadvertently passed as ‘duplicates’ in the late 1800s, and have now been returned to the Natural History Museum, Tring, on extended renewable loan. During research regarding these Archibald Menzies specimens, new insight was gained into hitherto confusing reference details on the label of his type specimen of California Condor Vultur californianus Shaw, 1797© 2014 The Authors; Journal compilation © 2014 British Ornithologists’ Club. This is an open access article free to all. The attached file is the published pdf

The early death of Colonel Robert C. Tytler and the afterlife of his collection

A letter by Allan Octavian Hume and three by Bertram Bevan-Petman, all written between 1904 and 1911 to Ernst Hartert, bird curator of Rothschild’s Tring Museum, are present in the Rothschild Tring archive, now held by the Natural History Museum. These shed light on both the probable cause of the early death in 1872 of Colonel Robert C. Tytler, British army officer and naturalist in colonial India, and on the somewhat convoluted fate of his collection subsequently.Copyright: © 2021 Prys-Jones, R et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credite

The Genomic Footprints of the Fall and Recovery of the Crested Ibis

Human-induced environmental change and habitat fragmentation pose major threats to biodiversity and require active conservation efforts to mitigate their consequences. Genetic rescue through translocation and the introduction of variation into imperiled populations has been argued as a powerful means to preserve, or even increase, the genetic diversity and evolutionary potential of endangered species [1-4]. However, factors such as outbreeding depression [5, 6] and a reduction in available genetic diversity render the success of such approaches uncertain. An improved evaluation of the consequence of genetic restoration requires knowledge of temporal changes to genetic diversity before and after the advent of management programs. To provide such information, a growing number of studies have included small numbers of genomic loci extracted from historic and even ancient specimens [7, 8]. We extend this approach to its natural conclusion, by characterizing the complete genomic sequences of modern and historic population samples of the crested ibis (Nipponia nippon), an endangered bird that is perhaps the most successful example of how conservation effort has brought a species back from the brink of extinction. Though its once tiny population has today recovered to >2,000 individuals [9], this process was accompanied by almost half of ancestral loss of genetic variation and high deleterious mutation load. We furthermore show how genetic drift coupled to inbreeding following the population bottleneck has largely purged the ancient polymorphisms from the current population. In conclusion, we demonstrate the unique promise of exploiting genomic information held within museum samples for conservation and ecological research.© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article available to all published under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The attached file is the published pdf

Allometry of the Duration of Flight Feather Molt in Birds

Replacement of flight feathers takes disproportionately more time for large birds than it does for small birds, because feather length increases with body size almost twice as fast as feather growth rate increases

The Type Specimen of Bonin Grosbeak Chaunoproctus Ferreorostris

Volume: 130Start Page: 230End Page: 23

Rediscovery of a long misattributed and misidentified Darwin Beagle bird specimen

This is an open access article, available to all readers online . The attached file is the published version of the article

The conundrum of an overlooked skeleton referable to Imperial Woodpecker Campephilus imperialis in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring

The discovery of an overlooked skeleton of Imperial Woodpecker Campephilus imperialis in the bird collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring (NHMUK) is documented, one of very few known to exist worldwide of this almost certainly extinct species. We present evidence that, on balance of probabilities, it is one of two collected by Alphonse Forrer in 1882 near the settlement of La Ciudad in the Sierra Madre Occidental, Durango, western Mexico; the whereabouts of the other, which did not come to NHMUK, appears currently unknown. During research into the NHMUK specimen, we demonstrated that the supposed Imperial Woodpecker skull held in the collection of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, must in fact be that of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker C. principalis.© 2021 The Authors; This is an open‐access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article

A review of records of Downey Woodpecker in Britain

Two historical records of Downy Woodpecker Dryobates pubescens in Britain are described. These records have not been formally reassessed for more than a century. A review of the records based on the available evidence is presented, which concludes that there is no support for Downy Woodpecker having occurred naturally in Britain.© British Birds. Articles from this journal can be made open access within institutional repositories two years following publication. The attached file is the published version of the article. If you wish to consult the rest of the issue visit the publisher's website

A New Subspecies of Brown banded Antpitta Grallaria Milleri from Antioquia, Colombia

Volume: 129Start Page: 5End Page: 1