Our big day is tomorrow

Tomorrow, Saturday April 22, from 10 AM – 4 PM we will open our doors and welcome all of you to visit our hidden treasures in the natural history collections of The Ohio State University. Stop by and talk to the curators who meticulously keep these specimens and make them available to students and researchers for study throughout the year. This is your chance each year to see what we do and to support our efforts.

The event is FREE and so is parking. We will have many activities for children including face painting, the very popular bugs-in-goo, a live arthropod zoo … and this year new, for anyone over 15 years, guided sessions on scientific illustration, drawing natural history specimens.

Enjoy some photos from last year events

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The set-up for tomorrow is in full swing, here is what I have seen so far

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About the Author: Angelika Nelson is curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and coordinates social media and outreach at the museum.

*** We hope to see you tomorrow ***

Happy Turkey Holiday!

It’s the time of year when ONE BIRD receives all the attention, at least here in the USA: the turkey. Turkeys have been part of the human food chain for a long time, Native Americans hunted them for food and so did the first settlers. Due to unregulated hunting turkeys declined dramatically with the increasing human population. By 1904 turkeys had all but disappeared from Ohio. Today the Wild Turkey Meleagris gallopavo is again a common sight in many metro parks in Ohio. Blendon Woods, for example, has a good population that can be observed easily, often even at the feeders at the nature center.

Note the bristly “beard” extending off the chest of male turkeys and the spurs on their legs as seen in the photos above. The two males on the right are displaying and probably make some “gobbling” sounds.

As a bioacoustician I am of course most interested in the sounds these birds make. You are probably familiar with the famous “gobble” call males make in spring to attract a mate but also in response to other males calling. Here is a recording from our archive (BLB21391):

The gobble is a loud, rapid gurgling sound, it’s the turkey’s version of a rooster’s crow.

Females make quite different calls (BLB12583):

Here is an example of calls given by a juvenile female (BLB13261):

I hope this made you appreciate the diversity of turkey calls and you will listen for their calls next time you visit one of the metro parks.

All recordings are of captive birds at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Wooster, Ohio in 1974. You can listen to the full recordings by clicking on the cut numbers above.

 

angelika_nelson_birdingAbout the Author: Angelika Nelson is curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics.