The Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution, houses and maintains the third largest
bird collection in the world with over 625,000 specimens. Our
National Collection has representatives of about 80% of the
approximately 9600 known species in the world's avifauna. The
collection is comprised of specimens primarily prepared as study
skins, skeletons, fluid preserved, eggs, nests, and mounted
skins. We also hold nearly 4000 primary type specimens. Our
tissue sample holdings are not searchable in this first phase of
public web access to the Birds database. Keyword searches on
summary fields can be run from the Keywords Search tab. Searches
can be run against specific fields from the Search by Field tab.
If you don't know what to search for, try one of the three
sample searches in the Quick Browse list below. Please note that
only about 65% of our holdings currently have complete or
partial records in the public specimen database. Missing from
the database are most of Columbi