#naturemw

Museums are places of preservation and education, but also of on-going and important research. Curator can be defined as a keeper or custodian of a museum collection, but many curators are also researchers who work in the field as well as in the collection vaults. 

H. David Bohlen curates the Ornithology collection at the Illinois State Museum and conducts long-term research on Illinois bird populations. In 1989, Dave authored “The Birds of Illinois,” a comprehensive survey of natural history information and museum records for 439 species of birds known at the time to occur (or previously occur) in Illinois. 

Since 1970, Dave has monitored birds at locations all over Sangamon County, often going out in the field seven days a week and documenting many of his observations with photographs. 

In 2013, he published the results of 40 years of study, reporting patterns of bird populations, including migration, breeding, arrival of new species in the area, and rare bird occurrences. Dave continues his field observations, now in his 48th year of study.

Long-term studies like this are invaluable sources of information about the natural world and how it has changed over time. They are a record of distribution and population trends that can be used to aid conservation efforts for species and the habitats they need to survive.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ability to capture a color photograph and print that image in a book or magazine page was in its infancy. To bring colorful butterflies and moths to life on the page, and produce the most accurate guides possible, naturalists preserved specimens by means of a process called lepidochromy.* 

Simply put, it involved humidifying the wings and using papers prepared with an adhesive so that when the specimens were pressed between the papers, the scales on both sides of the wings would be preserved. The papers were then mounted to a plate or in a book, and the bodies were drawn in to provide detail.

The Illinois State Museum has a set of 250 transfer prints of butterflies and moths collected in France. We do not know the exact year or creator of the plates from France. We do know the original owner of the prints purchased them through the mail from a bookseller in New Jersey in 1926. In addition, the Museum has a three-volume set of books by Sherman F. Denton published in 1900 containing numerous additional prints. Images here are taken from both collections.