Bird Spotting at the Museum
An ethno-ornithological tour across the Oxford University Natural History Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
View stops on Museum Map
Pitt Rivers Museum
Museum of Natural History
View stops in the Pitt Rivers Museum
Turn right, head to the lift or stairs for the First Floor
View stops on the First Floor
View stops in the Natural History Museum
Guará Scarlet Ibis
Reviving the practice of making feather cloaks
Indigenous knowledge
Glicéria Tupinambá meeting with featherwork collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2022
In 2023, Glicéria visited Oxford to examine some of the featherworks in the Pitt Rivers Museum. By studying the techniques of weaving and knotting present in the objects, she is able to recreate new featherworks back in her community in Brazil.
The guará no longer exists within Tupinamba territory, likely due to reasons such as the destruction of mangrove forests. Glicéria often uses feathers from other birds like chickens and ducks in her cloaks, collecting them from the ground as gifts given to her from the land.
By studying the feather cloaks held in European collections, she has woven her own intricate feather cloaks, created as gifts for the encantados, the "enchanted ones" who live within Tupinambá territory.
Collaborating with Indigenous researchers and community members is one of the most important aspects of museum work today. Working with people like Glicéria aims to reinvigorate the museum's collections in new ways, and generate new kinds of knowledge about objects beyond that which is present in the written records of the museum.
Return to tour
Scarlet Ibis
Eudocimus ruber
Scarlet Ibis mostly inhabit northern wetland and mangrove areas of South America. They are renowned for their brilliant red plumage, which like flamingos, is related to the carotenoid pigments they get from their diets of crustaceans and shrimps.The beautiful colour of the scarlet ibis was noted by the first Europeans in South America in the 16th century, where their feathers were observed on beautifully intricate feather cloaks made by the Tupinambá people on the coast of Brazil. The ibis are known as guará. Indigenous activist, researcher and artist Glicéria Tupinambá is working to revive the practice of making feather cloaks. By studying the feather cloaks held in European collections, she has woven her own intricate feather cloaks, created as gifts for the encantados, the "enchanted ones" who live within Tupinambá territory.
This specimen on display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History sits opposite the entrance to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
A Huia ear ornament
Heteralocha acutirostris
This ornament is perhaps one of the most poignant bird-objects present in the Pitt Rivers Museum because it is made from the skin of a now extinct bird from New Zealand/Aotearoa: the huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) Found at ground level in forests, the huia were unique birds due to their extraordinary sexually dimorphic bill shapes. Working in mated pairs, the huia used their different beaks to co-operatively find food: the male would pierce holes in the side of rotting wood with his short, dagger-like bill and the female would then use her long curved-bill to scoop out grubs. The name “huia” most likely comes from the loud, whistling call the bird made in the forest. Maori hunters used to mimic this call in order to attract birds to them in order to capture them. The decline of the huia has been attributed to a number of factors. In some ways, the bird’s distinctive bill was also a contributor to its downfall, as naturalists from overseas soon became obsessed with obtaining specimens to showcase this unique characteristic in museums collections and hundreds of birds were killed and shipped abroad. European fashion trends also contributed to the huia’s demise. On a visit to New Zealand in 1901, George V was presented with a black and white huia tail feather by a Maori spiritual leader, which he placed in the headband of his hat. Photos of the Duke and his befeathered hat were circulated back in England, where a fashion for huia feathers and beaks soon took off. Maori communities became deeply concerned by these threats to the huia, and in the late 1800s a number of groups placed a tapu on large areas of the huia’s remaining habitat, forbidding hunting in these areas. The calls of the Maori did have an effect on the New Zealand government, and in 1892 plans were put in place to set up sanctuaries for the huia, however action was not taken quickly enough and the sanctuaries were never established. The last sighting of huia was recorded in 1907 and is now considered extinct.
Skin of the now extinct huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) on display at the Museum.
Huia feathers are highly valued today, and in May 2024 a single feathers sold for over £22,000 at auction. The huia is a taonga (a sacred treasure) for the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, who still work to keep the spirits of the birds alive by treasuring their feathers in special boxes known as wakahuia, and by remembering and imitating their songs.
A Shuar headband tawasap
Ramphastos sp / Cracidae sp / Cotinga cayana
This brilliantly coloured headband is known as a tawasap, worn by members of several Indigenous groups in Peru and Ecuador, including the Shuar community. The tawasap is made on a complex meshwork of woven fibres, which are tied together to be able to fit around the forehead of the wearer and secured at the back with cotton cords. Predominantly red, yellow and black feathers, this tawasap also has a hidden single blue feather of a spangled cotinga (Cotinga cayana) nestled amongst the toucan feathers. In Shuar these birds are secha, and are known for their alluring beauty. Perhaps this feather was placed secretly to give the tawasap a greater beautifying power?Many members of the Shuar community believe that tawasap should only be worn by men. Its use should be limited to leaders, teachers (juakmaru) and shamans (uwishins), and revered hunters in the community, those who possess the power of Arutum (the great spirit who inhabits the rainforest). The tawasap has come to be a marker of Shuar identity and authority in the international sphere, as part of discussions of global climate change and biodiversity loss. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow for example, Tuntiak Katan, General Coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, spoke whilst wearing a tawasap. His speech emphasised the urgent need for countries like the UK to meaningfully commit to supporting Indigenous peoples in the fight against climate change. Indigenous peoples make up only 5% of the total global population but Indigenous territories sustain over 80% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity. Despite this, Indigenous voices are not always equally invited into the spaces where responses to the threats of global biodiversity and planetary futures are formulated. Leaders like Tuntiak Katan are petitioning to change this.
Headdress composed of several kinds of feather, collected by Willian John Burchell, probably in Brazil c1825. PRM 1886.1.908
“Science is finally recognizing that Indigenous populations are the best protectors of rainforests and of biodiversity. We are here to tell Glasgow, the world leaders, that the Indigenous populations are here to make a pact for life because there is no more time. Don’t make political promises that you are not going to keep."
Tuntiak Katan, at COP26 in Glasgow, Nov 2021
Fulmar Lamp
Fulmaris glaciaris
This small glass vial of yellow oil was collected from the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides by a man called Henry Wallis in 1889. While on first look, the relationship between this object and birds may not be very clear, the oil itself actually comes from the stomach of seabird called the Northern Fulmar. Northern Fulmars (Fulmaris glaciaris) are found in the northern hemisphere around the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They are one of our most common seabirds in northern Britain and are found year round. Though gull-like in appearance, they are actually more closely related to albatrosses. They nest on the ledges of cliffs and feed on zooplankton and small fish. They can be opportunistic feeders and will also eat discarded fish, making them common companions of fishing vessels. The oil shown in this lamp is the result of a pretty distinctive bodily feature of fulmars: they can eject a foul-smelling oil from their fore-guts and out of their mouths as a defence against predators. This behaviour is practiced by both adults and chicks. You can imagine as a predatory bird like a peregrine falcon trying to eat a fulmar chick, you would be quite put off if your feathers were suddenly covered in stinky stomach fluid! The word fulmar actually refers to this, being a mix of two Old Norse words: fúll (“foul”) and már (“gull”). In the 19th century seabirds were a staple part of the diets and livelihoods of the inhabitants of St Kilda, but in 1930, shortly before this jar arrived at the Museum, the last inhabitants of St Kilda were evacuated and the period of fulmar hunting came to end. All parts of the bird would be used, the feathers reserved for sale and for bedding, the meat either eaten fresh or preserved with salt. The oil in particular was a mainstay of the St Kildan’s economy, and would be used as a fuel for lamps, the oil poured into the dried stomach of a gannet and used as a candle – probably the purpose of this oil in the vial.
Jar of fulmar oil for burning in lamps. Collected by H.M Wallis. PRM 1931.62.4
Despite increasing fulmar populations in Britain over the 20th century, a recent study on St Kilda showed there were 45,000 fewer fulmars on the island than 24 years ago. Studies of Northern Fulmar between 2008-2013 worryingly showed the presence of micropastics in 89.5% of birds.
South American Bird Diorama
Dioramas like this first emerged at the end of the 19th century in Europe and North America and were designed to try and recreate a more situated sense of how animals might have lived and behaved when alive. The age of this case is showing in the faded appearance of the specimens inside.The diorama's label in itself tells an interesting story. If you are familiar with South American birds, you may notice that some of the names given here no longer reflect current taxonomic standards. For example, Cacicus vitellinus, listed here as Lawrence's Black-Tailed Cacique, is now considered a subspecies of Cacicus cela, the Yellow-Rumped Cacique.Rather than fixed, objective, or truly universal, taxonomy is constantly evolving and genetic sequencing has transformed how we approach classification. This historic label reminds us that like other knowledge systems, taxonomy is also an ongoing and negotiated process.
This display of birds is in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History opposite the entrance to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
A Mundurucu Headdress
Amazona sp / Cracidae sp / Ara ararauna
The label for this headdress in the Featherwork display currently describes it as originating in Guyana. Research by Rosa Dyer suggests it more likely derives from the Mundurucu community, an Indigenous group whose ancestral territories are found in the Upper Rio Tapajos area of northern Brazil.The yellow feathers on this headress have been produced through a process called tapirage, practiced by Indigenous communities across South America for hundreds of years. It involves plucking feathers from live parrots, and then feeding the parrots a special diet and rubbing the plucked areas of the parrots skin with tinctures made from plants like annatto (Bixa orellana) or from the skin secretions of frogs (such as the dart frog Dendrobates tinctorius, with the given Latin name "tinctorius" meaning "used to dye or change colour"). The result is that feathers which would previously have been green will grow back as yellow or orange. Transformation is a central theme in many South American Indigenous cosmologies. The birds in this myth purposefully transform their appearance by anointing themselves with different bodily substances. Perhaps this is also why tapirage feathers were valued by the Mundurucu - not because they were yellow, but because the feathers were transformed from their original appearance. This transformative power could then have been transferred to whoever wore the headdress.
Headdress composed of several kinds of feather, collected by Willian John Burchell, probably in Brazil c1825. PRM 1886.1.908
The birds painted themselves with the red blood, the blue fluid from the gallbladder, and the yellow fat. The toucan smeared blue all around its eyes, and yellow on the end of its tail, and a band of yellow across its breast. It also put a dab of blood on its tail. The woodpecker painted its head red; the pipira daubed itself all over with blue.
Murphy (1950) Mundurucu Religion
Enxet Headdresses
Rhea americana /Ciconia maguari / Phoenicopterus chilensis
These headdresses come from the Gran Chaco, a vast region of lowland forests and savannah grassland in South America which spans across areas of Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. These particular objects both come from Paraguay. The headdress on the left is made from feathers of the Greater rhea (Rhea americana), South America's largest bird, while the headdress on the right is made from the feathers of wetland birds: Magauri storks (Ciconia maguari) and Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis). Feather headdresses like these were worn by members of the Enxet Sur, one of many Indigenous communities in the Paraguayan Chaco. They would be worn on the head as part of the yanmana, a girl's initiation ceremony which involved complex dance formations. Rhea feathers would be worn by the female initiate, together with deer foot rattles and necklaces made from shells. The dance of the yanmana required the girl to repeatedly fend off attacks from spirits known as salowak. Young men would wear flamingo feather headdresses, rhea feather skirts and woven masks over their heads to impersonate the salowak, emerging from the forest shouting and running at the women, before being pushed back by older women surrounding the initiate. This dance would be repeated for hours into the night, amidst feasting and celebration.
Rhea feather hair ornament PRM 1903.19.57 and a flamingo and stork feather headdress PRM 1889.35.38
If you look closely at the labels for these headdresses, you can see the term "Lengua" is used. This is a derogatory colonial name used to refer to the Enxet by colonial settlers in Paraguay in the 19th century. Work is being undertaken to address the problematic terms used within the labels in the museum, but many of them are still present. Many of the Paraguayan objects were collected by members of the South American Missionary Society (SAMS). The missionaries entered the Chaco in the late 19th century with the goals of evangelising Indigenous populations and converting the Chaco into an industrially profitable landscape. The missionaries would sometimes wear featherworks themselves as costumes during "Missionary Exhibitions" once they returned to Britain. These were often racist caricatures of Enxet peoples. The influence of this work is still evident today, and much of the Chaco has now been transformed through cattle-ranching and monocrop agriculture, processes which were initiated by the missionary projects. Birds like the rhea are threatened by these developments, and the Enxet can no longer hunt or create featherworks in the same way.
Women dressed for the yanmana. Photo by Andrew Pride. Pitt Rivers Museum
Hummingbird Fan
Trochilidae sp. / Amazona amazonica /Ara sp.
This intricate feather fan was likely made sometime around the mid-19th century. It follows a trend in Victorian fashion for accessorising with brightly coloured feathers, beetles and stuffed birds, a trend known as the “Brazilian style”. Though described as English, the parts of this fan probably came from all around the world.The hummingbirds mounted at the centre of the fan were some of the most highly-desired birds. Their tiny size and brilliant colours made them especially alluring for European consumers. While other birds such as parrots could be shipped alive across the Atlantic, the size and high metabolisms of hummingbirds meant they did not survive the processes of capture and transport to Europe in the same way. This meant, the only way for most Europeans to encounter hummingbirds was as dead specimens or through illustrations. Demand for birds for the use in fashion items continued to increase throughout the 19th century, with the style reaching its peak in the 1880s. One London seller declared at the time that he had taken a delivery of over 40,000 hummingbirds in a single shipment! This seemingly ever-increasing demand for exotic birds led to concern for the conservation of bird populations in the wild. In 1889, largely in response to their frustration at the inaction of the male-only British Ornithology Union, Emily Williamson and Eliza Phillips initiated an all-women activist movement intended to put a stop to the fashion industry which was threatening to drive birds from all over the world to extinction. Their campaigning was eventually successful and in July 1921 the Plumage Prohibition Act was passed in Britain, banning the import of plumage. Their efforts also later resulted in the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, or the RSPB, the largest bird conservation charity in the UK.
Feather fran. PRM 1954.8.1.42
American artist, Martin Johnson Heade, travelled to Brazil in 1863 with the ambition to paint hummingbirds "in all their variety of life." He called the resulting series of illustrations The Gems of Brazil, a title that reveals a lot about how Europeans and Americans of the time imagined the New World. Places like Brazil were seen as lands of exotic, high-value resources full of natural riches to be taken and brought back for the benefit of America and Europe.
White-Billed Toucan
Ramphastos tucanus
White-billed toucans are found throughout the rainforests of Central and South America. They are extremely noisy birds, whose yelping calls echo across humid lowland forests. Males and females may perform duets together, the female’s call distinguishable from the male’s by its higher pitch.The Shuar name for toucan is tsukanka. They are often represented in Shuar songs and poetry, known as ánents or nampet. These are sung by women to express emotion or to manifest particular fortunes in the future. Toucans often appear as symbols for love and desire, expressed by both men and women, perhaps mirroring the duets the tsukanka sing in the forest.
This specimen in a display Adaption at the Museum of Natural History shows the toucan's distinctive large bill.
Listen to a White-Throated Toucan call. Source: Niels Krabbe via xeno-canto.org
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Transcript
Bird Spotting at the Museum
An ethno-ornithological tour across the Oxford University Natural History Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
View stops on Museum Map
Pitt Rivers Museum
Museum of Natural History
View stops in the Pitt Rivers Museum
Turn right, head to the lift or stairs for the First Floor
View stops on the First Floor
View stops in the Natural History Museum
Guará Scarlet Ibis
Reviving the practice of making feather cloaks
Indigenous knowledge
Glicéria Tupinambá meeting with featherwork collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2022
In 2023, Glicéria visited Oxford to examine some of the featherworks in the Pitt Rivers Museum. By studying the techniques of weaving and knotting present in the objects, she is able to recreate new featherworks back in her community in Brazil.
The guará no longer exists within Tupinamba territory, likely due to reasons such as the destruction of mangrove forests. Glicéria often uses feathers from other birds like chickens and ducks in her cloaks, collecting them from the ground as gifts given to her from the land.
By studying the feather cloaks held in European collections, she has woven her own intricate feather cloaks, created as gifts for the encantados, the "enchanted ones" who live within Tupinambá territory.
Collaborating with Indigenous researchers and community members is one of the most important aspects of museum work today. Working with people like Glicéria aims to reinvigorate the museum's collections in new ways, and generate new kinds of knowledge about objects beyond that which is present in the written records of the museum.
Return to tour
Scarlet Ibis
Eudocimus ruber
Scarlet Ibis mostly inhabit northern wetland and mangrove areas of South America. They are renowned for their brilliant red plumage, which like flamingos, is related to the carotenoid pigments they get from their diets of crustaceans and shrimps.The beautiful colour of the scarlet ibis was noted by the first Europeans in South America in the 16th century, where their feathers were observed on beautifully intricate feather cloaks made by the Tupinambá people on the coast of Brazil. The ibis are known as guará. Indigenous activist, researcher and artist Glicéria Tupinambá is working to revive the practice of making feather cloaks. By studying the feather cloaks held in European collections, she has woven her own intricate feather cloaks, created as gifts for the encantados, the "enchanted ones" who live within Tupinambá territory.
This specimen on display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History sits opposite the entrance to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
A Huia ear ornament
Heteralocha acutirostris
This ornament is perhaps one of the most poignant bird-objects present in the Pitt Rivers Museum because it is made from the skin of a now extinct bird from New Zealand/Aotearoa: the huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) Found at ground level in forests, the huia were unique birds due to their extraordinary sexually dimorphic bill shapes. Working in mated pairs, the huia used their different beaks to co-operatively find food: the male would pierce holes in the side of rotting wood with his short, dagger-like bill and the female would then use her long curved-bill to scoop out grubs. The name “huia” most likely comes from the loud, whistling call the bird made in the forest. Maori hunters used to mimic this call in order to attract birds to them in order to capture them. The decline of the huia has been attributed to a number of factors. In some ways, the bird’s distinctive bill was also a contributor to its downfall, as naturalists from overseas soon became obsessed with obtaining specimens to showcase this unique characteristic in museums collections and hundreds of birds were killed and shipped abroad. European fashion trends also contributed to the huia’s demise. On a visit to New Zealand in 1901, George V was presented with a black and white huia tail feather by a Maori spiritual leader, which he placed in the headband of his hat. Photos of the Duke and his befeathered hat were circulated back in England, where a fashion for huia feathers and beaks soon took off. Maori communities became deeply concerned by these threats to the huia, and in the late 1800s a number of groups placed a tapu on large areas of the huia’s remaining habitat, forbidding hunting in these areas. The calls of the Maori did have an effect on the New Zealand government, and in 1892 plans were put in place to set up sanctuaries for the huia, however action was not taken quickly enough and the sanctuaries were never established. The last sighting of huia was recorded in 1907 and is now considered extinct.
Skin of the now extinct huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) on display at the Museum.
Huia feathers are highly valued today, and in May 2024 a single feathers sold for over £22,000 at auction. The huia is a taonga (a sacred treasure) for the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, who still work to keep the spirits of the birds alive by treasuring their feathers in special boxes known as wakahuia, and by remembering and imitating their songs.
A Shuar headband tawasap
Ramphastos sp / Cracidae sp / Cotinga cayana
This brilliantly coloured headband is known as a tawasap, worn by members of several Indigenous groups in Peru and Ecuador, including the Shuar community. The tawasap is made on a complex meshwork of woven fibres, which are tied together to be able to fit around the forehead of the wearer and secured at the back with cotton cords. Predominantly red, yellow and black feathers, this tawasap also has a hidden single blue feather of a spangled cotinga (Cotinga cayana) nestled amongst the toucan feathers. In Shuar these birds are secha, and are known for their alluring beauty. Perhaps this feather was placed secretly to give the tawasap a greater beautifying power?Many members of the Shuar community believe that tawasap should only be worn by men. Its use should be limited to leaders, teachers (juakmaru) and shamans (uwishins), and revered hunters in the community, those who possess the power of Arutum (the great spirit who inhabits the rainforest). The tawasap has come to be a marker of Shuar identity and authority in the international sphere, as part of discussions of global climate change and biodiversity loss. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow for example, Tuntiak Katan, General Coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, spoke whilst wearing a tawasap. His speech emphasised the urgent need for countries like the UK to meaningfully commit to supporting Indigenous peoples in the fight against climate change. Indigenous peoples make up only 5% of the total global population but Indigenous territories sustain over 80% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity. Despite this, Indigenous voices are not always equally invited into the spaces where responses to the threats of global biodiversity and planetary futures are formulated. Leaders like Tuntiak Katan are petitioning to change this.
Headdress composed of several kinds of feather, collected by Willian John Burchell, probably in Brazil c1825. PRM 1886.1.908
“Science is finally recognizing that Indigenous populations are the best protectors of rainforests and of biodiversity. We are here to tell Glasgow, the world leaders, that the Indigenous populations are here to make a pact for life because there is no more time. Don’t make political promises that you are not going to keep."
Tuntiak Katan, at COP26 in Glasgow, Nov 2021
Fulmar Lamp
Fulmaris glaciaris
This small glass vial of yellow oil was collected from the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides by a man called Henry Wallis in 1889. While on first look, the relationship between this object and birds may not be very clear, the oil itself actually comes from the stomach of seabird called the Northern Fulmar. Northern Fulmars (Fulmaris glaciaris) are found in the northern hemisphere around the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They are one of our most common seabirds in northern Britain and are found year round. Though gull-like in appearance, they are actually more closely related to albatrosses. They nest on the ledges of cliffs and feed on zooplankton and small fish. They can be opportunistic feeders and will also eat discarded fish, making them common companions of fishing vessels. The oil shown in this lamp is the result of a pretty distinctive bodily feature of fulmars: they can eject a foul-smelling oil from their fore-guts and out of their mouths as a defence against predators. This behaviour is practiced by both adults and chicks. You can imagine as a predatory bird like a peregrine falcon trying to eat a fulmar chick, you would be quite put off if your feathers were suddenly covered in stinky stomach fluid! The word fulmar actually refers to this, being a mix of two Old Norse words: fúll (“foul”) and már (“gull”). In the 19th century seabirds were a staple part of the diets and livelihoods of the inhabitants of St Kilda, but in 1930, shortly before this jar arrived at the Museum, the last inhabitants of St Kilda were evacuated and the period of fulmar hunting came to end. All parts of the bird would be used, the feathers reserved for sale and for bedding, the meat either eaten fresh or preserved with salt. The oil in particular was a mainstay of the St Kildan’s economy, and would be used as a fuel for lamps, the oil poured into the dried stomach of a gannet and used as a candle – probably the purpose of this oil in the vial.
Jar of fulmar oil for burning in lamps. Collected by H.M Wallis. PRM 1931.62.4
Despite increasing fulmar populations in Britain over the 20th century, a recent study on St Kilda showed there were 45,000 fewer fulmars on the island than 24 years ago. Studies of Northern Fulmar between 2008-2013 worryingly showed the presence of micropastics in 89.5% of birds.
South American Bird Diorama
Dioramas like this first emerged at the end of the 19th century in Europe and North America and were designed to try and recreate a more situated sense of how animals might have lived and behaved when alive. The age of this case is showing in the faded appearance of the specimens inside.The diorama's label in itself tells an interesting story. If you are familiar with South American birds, you may notice that some of the names given here no longer reflect current taxonomic standards. For example, Cacicus vitellinus, listed here as Lawrence's Black-Tailed Cacique, is now considered a subspecies of Cacicus cela, the Yellow-Rumped Cacique.Rather than fixed, objective, or truly universal, taxonomy is constantly evolving and genetic sequencing has transformed how we approach classification. This historic label reminds us that like other knowledge systems, taxonomy is also an ongoing and negotiated process.
This display of birds is in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History opposite the entrance to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
A Mundurucu Headdress
Amazona sp / Cracidae sp / Ara ararauna
The label for this headdress in the Featherwork display currently describes it as originating in Guyana. Research by Rosa Dyer suggests it more likely derives from the Mundurucu community, an Indigenous group whose ancestral territories are found in the Upper Rio Tapajos area of northern Brazil.The yellow feathers on this headress have been produced through a process called tapirage, practiced by Indigenous communities across South America for hundreds of years. It involves plucking feathers from live parrots, and then feeding the parrots a special diet and rubbing the plucked areas of the parrots skin with tinctures made from plants like annatto (Bixa orellana) or from the skin secretions of frogs (such as the dart frog Dendrobates tinctorius, with the given Latin name "tinctorius" meaning "used to dye or change colour"). The result is that feathers which would previously have been green will grow back as yellow or orange. Transformation is a central theme in many South American Indigenous cosmologies. The birds in this myth purposefully transform their appearance by anointing themselves with different bodily substances. Perhaps this is also why tapirage feathers were valued by the Mundurucu - not because they were yellow, but because the feathers were transformed from their original appearance. This transformative power could then have been transferred to whoever wore the headdress.
Headdress composed of several kinds of feather, collected by Willian John Burchell, probably in Brazil c1825. PRM 1886.1.908
The birds painted themselves with the red blood, the blue fluid from the gallbladder, and the yellow fat. The toucan smeared blue all around its eyes, and yellow on the end of its tail, and a band of yellow across its breast. It also put a dab of blood on its tail. The woodpecker painted its head red; the pipira daubed itself all over with blue.
Murphy (1950) Mundurucu Religion
Enxet Headdresses
Rhea americana /Ciconia maguari / Phoenicopterus chilensis
These headdresses come from the Gran Chaco, a vast region of lowland forests and savannah grassland in South America which spans across areas of Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. These particular objects both come from Paraguay. The headdress on the left is made from feathers of the Greater rhea (Rhea americana), South America's largest bird, while the headdress on the right is made from the feathers of wetland birds: Magauri storks (Ciconia maguari) and Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis). Feather headdresses like these were worn by members of the Enxet Sur, one of many Indigenous communities in the Paraguayan Chaco. They would be worn on the head as part of the yanmana, a girl's initiation ceremony which involved complex dance formations. Rhea feathers would be worn by the female initiate, together with deer foot rattles and necklaces made from shells. The dance of the yanmana required the girl to repeatedly fend off attacks from spirits known as salowak. Young men would wear flamingo feather headdresses, rhea feather skirts and woven masks over their heads to impersonate the salowak, emerging from the forest shouting and running at the women, before being pushed back by older women surrounding the initiate. This dance would be repeated for hours into the night, amidst feasting and celebration.
Rhea feather hair ornament PRM 1903.19.57 and a flamingo and stork feather headdress PRM 1889.35.38
If you look closely at the labels for these headdresses, you can see the term "Lengua" is used. This is a derogatory colonial name used to refer to the Enxet by colonial settlers in Paraguay in the 19th century. Work is being undertaken to address the problematic terms used within the labels in the museum, but many of them are still present. Many of the Paraguayan objects were collected by members of the South American Missionary Society (SAMS). The missionaries entered the Chaco in the late 19th century with the goals of evangelising Indigenous populations and converting the Chaco into an industrially profitable landscape. The missionaries would sometimes wear featherworks themselves as costumes during "Missionary Exhibitions" once they returned to Britain. These were often racist caricatures of Enxet peoples. The influence of this work is still evident today, and much of the Chaco has now been transformed through cattle-ranching and monocrop agriculture, processes which were initiated by the missionary projects. Birds like the rhea are threatened by these developments, and the Enxet can no longer hunt or create featherworks in the same way.
Women dressed for the yanmana. Photo by Andrew Pride. Pitt Rivers Museum
Hummingbird Fan
Trochilidae sp. / Amazona amazonica /Ara sp.
This intricate feather fan was likely made sometime around the mid-19th century. It follows a trend in Victorian fashion for accessorising with brightly coloured feathers, beetles and stuffed birds, a trend known as the “Brazilian style”. Though described as English, the parts of this fan probably came from all around the world.The hummingbirds mounted at the centre of the fan were some of the most highly-desired birds. Their tiny size and brilliant colours made them especially alluring for European consumers. While other birds such as parrots could be shipped alive across the Atlantic, the size and high metabolisms of hummingbirds meant they did not survive the processes of capture and transport to Europe in the same way. This meant, the only way for most Europeans to encounter hummingbirds was as dead specimens or through illustrations. Demand for birds for the use in fashion items continued to increase throughout the 19th century, with the style reaching its peak in the 1880s. One London seller declared at the time that he had taken a delivery of over 40,000 hummingbirds in a single shipment! This seemingly ever-increasing demand for exotic birds led to concern for the conservation of bird populations in the wild. In 1889, largely in response to their frustration at the inaction of the male-only British Ornithology Union, Emily Williamson and Eliza Phillips initiated an all-women activist movement intended to put a stop to the fashion industry which was threatening to drive birds from all over the world to extinction. Their campaigning was eventually successful and in July 1921 the Plumage Prohibition Act was passed in Britain, banning the import of plumage. Their efforts also later resulted in the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, or the RSPB, the largest bird conservation charity in the UK.
Feather fran. PRM 1954.8.1.42
American artist, Martin Johnson Heade, travelled to Brazil in 1863 with the ambition to paint hummingbirds "in all their variety of life." He called the resulting series of illustrations The Gems of Brazil, a title that reveals a lot about how Europeans and Americans of the time imagined the New World. Places like Brazil were seen as lands of exotic, high-value resources full of natural riches to be taken and brought back for the benefit of America and Europe.
White-Billed Toucan
Ramphastos tucanus
White-billed toucans are found throughout the rainforests of Central and South America. They are extremely noisy birds, whose yelping calls echo across humid lowland forests. Males and females may perform duets together, the female’s call distinguishable from the male’s by its higher pitch.The Shuar name for toucan is tsukanka. They are often represented in Shuar songs and poetry, known as ánents or nampet. These are sung by women to express emotion or to manifest particular fortunes in the future. Toucans often appear as symbols for love and desire, expressed by both men and women, perhaps mirroring the duets the tsukanka sing in the forest.
This specimen in a display Adaption at the Museum of Natural History shows the toucan's distinctive large bill.
Listen to a White-Throated Toucan call. Source: Niels Krabbe via xeno-canto.org