Tag Archives for World Museum Liverpool

Unpacking the Entanglements in Liverpool’s Lost Drawer of White-eyes.

By John-James Wilson, Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

It started with the discovery of a letter tucked away in the collection history files. In 1948, the curator of the Raffles Museum in Singapore was trying to track down the type specimen of Zosterops difficilis (a subspecies of Mountain White-eye) and had written to the director at Liverpool Museum (now World Museum) to ask if the specimen was there. What began as a simple curiosity-led search for a single specimen quickly snowballed. This 77-year-old enquiry had suddenly launched me into a deep dive into entangled stories of colonial history, war time losses and bird taxonomy.

I found myself re-examining the records of 250 White-eye specimens from the Liverpool collection, many with outdated or ambiguous taxonomic names, obscure references in scientific literature, and possible name-bearing-status. My recent article – Ghosts and entanglements in one drawer of a natural history collection – explains how I cross-referenced historical documents, species descriptions, and records of specimens in other collections around the world to establish modern names and types status for these specimens.

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Liverpool, Natural History and Extinction: The Case of a Real Liver Bird

Written by John-James Wilson (Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum), Jude Piesse (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, LJMU) & Alyssa Grossman (Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, University of Liverpool).

The interdisciplinary public engagement project ‘ENLivEN: Empire, Nature and Liverpool: Investigating and Engaging with Natural History’, is a collaboration between University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and 14 city-wide partners. In this blog we bring together reflections from a workshop held at World Museum, Liverpool in October 2025, where we trialled approaches for the project with LJMU undergraduates. ENLivEN will develop further workshops on similarly evocative ‘catalyst’ specimens and objects held across participating institutions.

John-James Wilson (Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum)

Spotted Green Pigeons are a species that became extinct at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In 1793, Dr John Latham noticed two unusual taxidermized pigeons in private natural history collections in London. He described them as a new species that he called Spotted Green Pigeons. One of the specimens is now lost but the other was bought by the 13th Earl of Derby. In 1851, the 13th Earl of Derby left his specimen to the people of Liverpool in his will. Because the specimen is kept at World Museum, this specimen became known as the Liverpool Pigeon.

The Liverpool Pigeon is now the only known Spotted Green Pigeon specimen in existence. Uncertainty about the status and nearest relatives of Spotted Green Pigeons continued for over 200 years. DNA analysis in 2014 convinced scientists that Spotted Green Pigeons were a genuine, extinct species. Spotted Green Pigeons were only very distantly related to Feral Pigeons found in Liverpool and cities around the world.

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Crispy, Brown and Far Too Delicate – Are Herbarium Specimens Just Too Difficult to Use?

Written by Clare Brown, Leeds Museums and Galleries.

Taking a walk through a forest, running through fields of wheat or even just gazing at trees, all a far-cry from dealing with the sheets of pressed, long-dead dried plants you come across in museum collections. Good taxidermy at least looks like the original animal.

Other problems with plant specimens include their need for low light, extremely careful handling and, occasionally, mercuric chloride. Despite being phenomenally important to researchers, for everything from tracking climate change to curing cancer, plant collections are not at the top of many people’s lists when it comes to exhibitions, events and workshops.

So, what public-facing engagement can you do with herbarium specimens? Here I’ve looked at a few great case studies where creative collections are delivering brilliant botany… Continue reading →

NatSCA Digital Digest – August 2025

Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Moves Team Leader at the Natural History Museum.

Welcome to the August edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

Digital Digest is a monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

Transmitting Science Upcoming Online Courses

Registration is open for a number of online training courses over at Transmitting Science. Upcoming courses include Naturalistic & Scientific Illustration, An Introduction to R, Finite Element Analysis Applied to Life Sciences and Python Machine Learning in Biology.

For a full list of courses, details on timetables, course structure, pricings, academic credits, and registration can be found on the courses open for registration page here.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – August

Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Move Team Leader at the Natural History Museum

Welcome to the August edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

Registration is now open for the 13th European Bird Curators Meeting, October 2024, in Liverpool.

The European Bird Curators Meetings aim to promote cooperation, dissemination of best practices and new techniques in the curation, management, and use of bird collections. Presenters in the scientific programme often include curators, collection managers, museum historians and ornithological researchers. These are friendly meetings and anyone with an interest is welcome to join us.

The meeting will include plenary and submitted presentations, discussion sessions, collections tour, conference dinner (optional – Tuesday 29th October) and field excursion (optional – Thursday 31st October). 

Please follow the ‘Tickets available here’ link from the event webpage to register. They have single day registration options and have kept costs as low as possible to encourage attendance by local natural history curators. 

If you have any questions, please email vertebratezoology@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk.

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