Wildlife Museum
The Wildlife Museum houses over 14,000 bird and mammals specimens. The collection emphasizes birds, with over 7,900 avian skins, mounts, and skeletal material, and 3,500 egg sets and nests. We also have over 2,700 mammal skins and skeletal material.
The collection is mainly from California's north coast, but includes specimens from 47 U.S. states and 48 countries.
Notable collections housed here include: Stanley W. Harris collection of over 1,100 bird skins from California and Ohio. The collection (in part) of Charles I. Clay of Eureka, California. The Clay collection includes over 200 live mounts, close to 400 skins and over 1,400 egg sets. The egg collection of cousins Lawrence Zerlang and Thomas Frazer totals over 1,500 egg sets. We also house the H. E. Wilder collection of over 350 birds and mammals, and the G. W. Peacock collection of bird mounts.
Course Collection Use
The Wildlife Museum's bird skins and mammal skins and skeletons are used regularly in labs. Some of the courses that routinely use museum specimens include Ornithology, Mammals Management, Wildlife Conclave, Waterfowl, Upland Game, and Nongame Management.
Research
The Wildlife Museum's collections of bird skins, mounts, skeletons, eggs, nests, and mammal skins and skeletal material are available for use in research projects by faculty, staff, students (with faculty permission), and qualified scientists.
For more information see our collection use policies
Displays
There are over 1,000 specimens on display throughout the Wildlife and Fisheries Building. These include over 900 birds of more than 600 taxa and 130 mammal specimens of 65 species. The building is open to the public during the semester Monday through Thursday 7am - 9pm and Friday 7am - 5pm.
Waterfowl Heritage
Our display of waterbird decoys includes working decoys over 100 years old, recent decorative decoys, and decoys used in seabird breeding colony restoration.
Contact
For more information contact the Museum Curator: