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Jönköping´s Ornithological
Museum is situated in the Town Park. The red-brick Museum building, which
dates from 1914-15, houses a fine collection of birds and their eggs.
In 1913 an army doctor by name of Herman Nyqvist (1856-1923) donated his
bird collection to the then Town Park Committee. When this Committee was
disbanded, the collection passed into the ownership of the Jönköping Municipal
Council and is now looked after by the Parks Department |
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The collection comprises
1 458 specimens covering 341 species. The shot and stuffed birds date
from the end of the 19th century
up to 1910. After this date the collection
has been supplemented with individual
specimens which have been found dead,
as current hunting legislation now makes it
impossible to assemble a collection of this size. Most of the collection,
of some 1 000 birds, were shot and stuffed by the donator
Dr. Herman Nyqvist. The taxi- dermy work
is extremely well done, and thus contributes to the high value of the collection. Even the
place and date of capture is given for most
of the specimens. |
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The Bird Museum
includes many beautiful examples of birds of prey, waders,
duck, woodpeckers and songbirds. Specimens which are particularly worthy
of note are Peregrine, Greenland Gyrfalcon, Ruff, Shoveller, Middle
Spotted
Woodpecker, Ring Ouzel and Roller. All the species of birds which nested
in
Sweden, or regularly stopped here during their migration flights at
the time
when the museum was started, are represented in the collection. In addition
there are a number of species which only periodically visited Sweden
at the
time the Museum was started. The range and species of birds in a given
area changes constantly. Some new species come here to nest, others
unfortun-
ately disappear. Examples of species which no longer nest in Sweden
are the Puffin, White Stork and Middle Spotted Woodpecker. Other species
are threatened and require special measures to ensure their survival.
Examples
of such birds are the Lesser Whitefronted Goose, Peregrine, Whitebacked
Woodpecker and Crested Lark. |
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In a separate part of the Museum there is an exceptional collection of birds eggs which has been assembled over almost 100 years. Edvard Wibeck, cheif forester, donated the majority of this collection to the town of Jönköping in 1943. The collection comprises eggs from some 170 Swedish species, and has been assembled from eggs collected around Jönköping and Värnamo, as well as from large parts of northern Sweden. The collection has also been supplemented through the acquisition of several smaller collections. The Museum collection currently comprises some 2 580 eggs from 281 species of birds. The oldest ones are a group of five Little Bittern eggs dated 18th June, 1866. |
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The egg collection part of the Museum also includes an important collection of photo- graphs of Swedish birds nest and habitats. 179 of these photographs were taken by Paul Rosenius, and 121 by Edvard Wibeck, whose photographic equipment is dis- played in the Museum. |
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