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MSB Bird Collection (Arctos)

Specimen Records: 50,632
Media Records: 222
iDigBio Last Ingested Date: 2026-04-23

The MSB Division of Birds maintains an extensive research collection of over 40,000 bird specimens from western North America and around the world. Taxonomic coverage consists of all avian orders and approximately 85% of avian families. The oldest specimens are from the mid-1870’s, with most collected after the 1950’s. The collection has grown about 6-fold since 1989, and it continues to grow rapidly through salvage and research-driven collecting. Approximately 40% of the specimens have frozen tissues associated with them. Collection highlights include: Synoptic series of the Birds of New Mexico for ID reference and teaching; the personal collection of Dale Zimmerman, donated in 2004, which contributed significantly to the taxonomic and geographic scope of the collection; the collection of Amadeo Rea, upon which the book Once a River was based; raptors and game birds of J.M. Campbell; the J. Stokley Ligon collections (in part); and representative threatened, endangered and extinct species of North America. All but the most recent research specimens are published online via the database Arctos.

Contacts

Name Christopher Witt
RoleCurator of Birds
Emailcwitt@unm.edu
Name Christopher Witt
RoleCurator of Birds
Emailcwitt@unm.edu
Name David Bloom
RoleVertNet Coordinator
Emaildbloom@vertnet.org
Name Dusty McDonald
RoleArctos Database Programmer
Emaildlmcdonald@alaska.edu
Name Andrew Johnson
RoleCollection Manager, Birds
Emailajohnson@unm.edu
Name Christopher Witt
RoleCurator of Birds
Emailcwitt@unm.edu
This table shows any data corrections that were performed on this recordset to improve the capabilities of iDigBio Search. The first column represents the correction performed. The last two columns represent the number and percentage of records that were corrected. A complete list of the data quality flags and their descriptions can be found here. Clicking on a data flag name will take you to a search for all records with this flag in this recordset.
FlagRecords With This Flag(%) Percent With This Flag
idigbio_isocountrycode_added  i49085
96.945
dwc_continent_added  i48995
96.767
geopoint_datum_error  i41544
82.051
dwc_datasetid_added  i28485
56.259
dwc_parentnameusageid_added  i28485
56.259
dwc_taxonid_added  i28485
56.259
dwc_taxonomicstatus_added  i28485
56.259
gbif_canonicalname_added  i28485
56.259
gbif_genericname_added  i28485
56.259
gbif_taxon_corrected  i28485
56.259
dwc_scientificnameauthorship_added  i28394
56.079
gbif_vernacularname_added  i26633
52.601
dwc_multimedia_added  i25894
51.142
dwc_taxonrank_replaced  i22391
44.223
gbif_reference_added  i16870
33.319
dwc_specificepithet_added  i12571
24.828
dwc_originalnameusageid_added  i5442
10.748
dwc_infraspecificepithet_added  i4205
8.305
taxon_match_failed  i3707
7.321
dwc_family_replaced  i3291
6.5
dwc_continent_replaced  i784
1.548
dwc_order_replaced  i489
0.966
rev_geocode_eez  i355
0.701
geopoint_low_precision  i278
0.549
dwc_taxonremarks_added  i150
0.296
rev_geocode_mismatch  i34
0.067
dwc_genus_replaced  i33
0.065
dwc_kingdom_suspect  i10
0.02
dwc_class_replaced  i4
0.008
dwc_phylum_replaced  i4
0.008
dwc_kingdom_replaced  i3
0.006
dwc_taxonrank_added  i3
0.006
rev_geocode_corrected  i3
0.006
rev_geocode_lon_sign  i3
0.006
dwc_country_replaced  i2
0.004
dwc_genus_added  i2
0.004
dwc_family_added  i1
0.002
dwc_order_added  i1
0.002