Auckland Museum's coddled eggs

Land vertebrates curator Brian Gill with Auckland Museums first Kakapo egg shells for their collection. Photo: Kellie BlizardBrian Gill ushers us into a small room on the third floor of the Auckland War Memorial Museum. A long narrow table takes up most of the space.

On top  is his latest acquisition. The museum's curator of land vertebrates beams over several egg shells.

Not everyone would understand his enthusiasm, but he has been after these  shells for  a while.

"What I'm trying to do is to develop the bird collection in all its forms and one form is the egg. We haven't had kakapo eggs here. We have the kaka and the kea. We've got the native parakeets but no kakapo eggs," explains Dr Gill.

"When I read in the newspaper that the kakapo had had good breeding in the last few years, I made inquiries as to whether there might be surplus egg shells that we could have for the collection."

The kakapo is a rare New Zealand parrot that the Department of Conservation is trying to save.

Only  128 birds are left, the most famous of which is Sirocco,  the "spokesbird"  for  kakapo recovery.

Sirocco became an online hit after BBC  documentary filmmaker and zoologist Mark Carwardine posted footage on YouTube showing the "frisky" bird attempting to mate with Carwardine's head. Sirocco now has his own Facebook and Twitter page.

But behind the scenes, it is people like Dr Gill who are quietly  contributing to the knowledge important to save birds like the kakapo.

"It's really important to have these eggs, especially since this is such a high profile bird," Dr Gill says.

The museum  has 3500 eggs and clutches in its collection, and about 18,000 birds, amphibians and other land mammals.

Visitors know of the stuffed animals on display, but most have no idea  how extensive the collections are.

Cabinets are filled with specimens, marked and catalogued, that researchers can examine and study.

These include "study skins", spread wings,  bone collections and feather spreads. They also have whole birds preserved in alcohol.`

`It is important to have some birds preserved whole so that the internal organs are present,'' explains
Dr Gill.

Study skins are dead birds that have undergone taxidermy work similar to that of the birds put on display. Spread wings are those of dead birds that are extended for display. They are helpful for studying the moulting of birds.

On the face of it, it seems a bit macabre, but  Dr Gill assures us everything  is useful for comparisons
or further studies.

``Just recently,  an archaeologist was in here for about five days trying to identify broken bones from an archaeological site in Vanuatu. He was using our reference collection to identify the fragments. So that sort of shows you the value that our collection has for the people,'' he says.

There are 200 to 300 birds in the freezer, including some that are rare: the crested tern, brown booby and
white-tailed tropicbird.

``These are all tropical birds that have been blown down in a storm. They are all very rare for New Zealand and so we are particularly pleased to get those,'' he says.

  After more than 20 years in the job, Dr Gill is still excited by each new acquisition. ``It's working with dead animals
but I don't look at it from that point of view. The research we undertake with these animals is so wonderful in terms of understanding their lives.''

He says the work done at the Auckland Museum is vital to conservation efforts throughout the country.

``The bird has died, which is really sad, but people can get information which could help the survival of the
species in the future.'' 

LOOKING FOR RARE BIRDS

Auckland War Memorial Museum has been developing its natural history resources for 150 years with a lot of help from Aucklanders.

"When people find a dead bird which was hit by a car or something, they ring us up. It's good for people to ring us and to tell us. If we need that one, we can say, yes we do need it," says Dr Gill.

He says labelling the specimen is important. What the museum needs to know is where the bird was found, when was it collected and by whom.

"We are always very interested in rarities," he says.