The largest scientific collection of birds in the country containing 2,719 specimens, representing 319 species of birds from 17 orders and 50 families is in the Department of nature and local history of the State museum of the State cultural center of Turkmenistan. The 115 years old collection, at the place of production covers Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Iran. Enejan Altyeva, head of the Department of Nature and Local History of the museum, told about this on the pages of the newspaper “Neutral Turkmenistan”.
Each copy contains information about the date and place of extraction, as well as the name of the collector. By the date of collection, you can determine whether it is wintering, nesting, sedentary or a passing bird. In the museum collection there are specimens of birds that, unfortunately, have disappeared from the nature of the country. One of them is a common scaly woodpecker. On the underside of the birds’ body, each feather is bordered by a narrow dark stripe, resulting in a scaly pattern. Traces of such a pattern can be distinguished on the back, which is why the name of the bird is connected. Previously, such a woodpecker was found only in the Murgab valley in the coastal tugai.
Since 1906 birds were collected by S.Bilkevich, N.Zarudnyy, since 1921 by S.Alexandrov, E.Shestoperov and I.Kolesnikov, and since 1956 by S.Sekunova and A.Rozyev.
Most part of the collection belong to Stanislav Bilkevich, ornithologist, museum worker, collector of the first permanent exhibition in Turkmenistan, organizer of the educational center for natural sciences in the region and the public library in Ashgabat. From 1901 to 1907, he studied the environs of Ashgabat, the districts of Archabil, Repetek, Charjou, Merv, Imam Baba, Cheleken, the banks of the Tejen River. Exploring local mammals, the scientist became the discoverer of the Transcaspian hyena, which differs from other relatives; together with the traveler and ornithologist Nikolay Zarudnyy, he described 11 new species of birds. The materials he collected on fauna are stored in the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the result of his work was the monograph “Ornithological fauna of the Transcaspian region”.
Several dozen birds of the Turkmen collection belong to Evgeniy Shestoperov, an ornithologist and entomologist who came to the Transcaspian region in 1915 and then studied birds and coleoptera insects. Subsequently, he worked at the Turkmen State Museum and at the Turkmen Scientific Research Station. E.Shestoperov's collections are located in various institutions, including the Turkmen Agricultural University named after S.A.Niyazov and the State Museum of the State Cultural Center of Turkmenistan.
In the modern world, the practice of composing ornithological collections is a thing of the past. It was replace by another scientific of studying birds – photography, video surveillance, recording of bird voices, and others, Altyeva notes.
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