Birds of the District of Columbia

Birds of the District of Columbia used to be a weird little secret at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, an exhibit I often had all to myself – a bunch of taxidermied birds in old-school wood and glass cases, lining the hallway around the basement auditorium. On a recent visit to the museum, I discovered that the birds – with new labels, but cases that looked like they could be the originals – had been moved to a place that, while not exactly prominent, is at least stumble-upon-able, if you enter the dinosaur hall from the front, wander all the way to the back, and keep on going. This appeared to be a common path, because a lot of other people were looking at the birds with me this time, speaking many languages. The exhibit is supposed to cover all of the birds that have been sighted in the District of Columbia, and many of them are familiar – the house sparrow, various herons, a couple dozen ducks. Various thrushes and shorebirds. Raptors, like the ospreys I’ve…