Episode 48: Behind the scenes with Allison Shultz of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan

In which we go behind the scenes to see the fascinating aspects of the bird specimen collection of one of America’s most well-respected museums.

You really should watch this episode on our Youtube page (Bird Podcast) or our Instagram feed (bird_podcast), but in case you cannot, included here is also the audio only version.

In this episode, Dr. Shultz shows us house finches, parrots, frigatebirds, penguins, condors, munias, whydahs and the many marvelous specimens in the Natural History Museum’s collection.

Allison Shultz is the assistant curator of ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. In this fascinating episode, she takes us behind the scenes to show us the vast and varied collection of bird specimens at the museum.

Dr. Shultz , as you see in her website, has loved animals her whole life, and fell in love with birds during her undergraduate at UC Berkeley. She is a native Southern Californian, and loves the diversity of habitats (and birds!) available in a very small geographic area! She credits her artistic eye for first drawing her to studying bird coloration, but now that is one of her main fascinations.