This paper reviews the bird skin collection housed in the Zoological Museum of Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The collection includes 925 specimens, belonging to 193 species from 53 families and 20 orders, collected between 1859 and 2021. Due to its historical background and the presence of rare species, it is considered to be one of most important ornithological collections in Eastern Europe. Such a collection can serve as a basis for valuable ornithological studies. Furthermore, a map representation with new distribution data for bird species is provided, which represents a source of information for the status of the avifauna of the Carpathian basin in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Aves, biodiversity, bird skin, museum, ornithology, ornithological collections

Museum collections are important primary data sources for addressing fundamental questions in morphology, systematics, biogeography and biodiversity conservation (Causey et al. 2004; Vágási et al. 2016; Bartoccioni 2017; Pap et al. 2017, 2019, 2020; Osváth et al. 2018, 2020; Meineke et al. 2019). Collections generally comprise specimens from different time periods and areas; thus, well-labelled preserved specimens provide information on how the environment and species distribution has changed over extended time periods (Solow and Roberts 2006; MacLean et al. 2019; Gotelli et al. 2021). The importance of keeping specimens in collections and making them publicly available is increasing, particularly in the case of old collections, which cover long time periods (Roselaar 2003; Waeber et al. 2017; Mikula et al. 2018).

An important ornithological collection is held in the Zoological Museum of Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (Fig. 1). The collection is unique in the region in many ways: it covers a long time span, it contains a variety of species, belonging to different families and orders, and it is composed of the work of several naturalists and employees of the museum. Bird skins account for approximately half of the total ornithological collection and they were only partially catalogued. Information about the collection had been published, particularly in the early stages of the museum’s history (e.g., Herman 1865, 1868, 1869; Apáthy 1910b, 1910a, 1911; Filipașcu et al. 1965; Filipașcu 1966), but the revision of the full collection had not been carried out and all specimen data had not been made public until now.

Figure 1. 

Bird skin specimens from the ornithological collection of the Zoological Museum of Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Hence, our aim was to systematically verify the species identification of the bird skin specimens in the Zoological Museum of Babeș-Bolyai University ornithological collection to provide a catalogue of these birds, including the following information: list of species, number of specimens per species, up to date taxonomic nomenclature, and collection data (date, location, collector).

We examined each bird skin in the collection and the data cards documenting the identification, locality, date, sex and catalogue number. After this, we checked the species identification of specimens, and we determined the sex and age of birds, where possible. The scientific name and the taxonomy of birds was updated following Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International Taxonomic Checklist v. 5 (2020).

Some specimens lacked a data card but had old inventory numbers. Therefore, in order to maximise the information content of these specimens, we researched contemporary museum registers and early museum-related reports for data. Following identification, all available specimen data were entered into the updated digital catalogue of the bird skin collection. All collection locality information was georeferenced.