Kate Schrader greeted and escorted us to the closed-to-the-public sixth floor occupied by the Ornithology Department. Dr. Joel Cracraft and his assistant Shannon Kenney showed us specimens of extinct birds such as the Heath Hen (1931), Eskimo Curlew (1963), Carolina Parakeet (1905) and Labrador Duck (1878) with tiny "railroad tracks" on its bill.

The magnificent Ivory-billed Woodpecker, last photographed in 1941 and which many hope is still secreted in the old-growth Louisiana forests, dwarfed the adjacent Pileated specimen. These especially interested my grandchildren: Tiffany, who hopes to become a scientist, and Nathan, who researched extinct creatures for his Cub Scout Project.

We were permitted to handle the specimens of non-extinct species.

Birds which rarely sit still in the wild, here granted us prolonged studies of minute differences in pattern and color.

Side-by-side, Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks proved how difficult they can be to differentiate in a sky-sighting.

Later, we meandered through the vast rooms housing many new areas completed in the last decade. The Butterfly Exhibit gave us a mini-trip back to the steamy jungles of Costa Rica surrounded by bright wings in constant motion. The Stissing Mountain diorama brought Dutchess County along with us. Jewels from all over the world filled the displays of the Pearl Exhibit, including dazzling necklaces belonging to Marie Antoinette, Liz Taylor and Mary Todd Lincoln. A pearl-studded pink enamel Faberge Egg exemplified craftsmanship at its most exquisite. Worldwide animal species, cultures from every corner of the earth, and planetarium shows are but a few of the delights. One could get lost for days in the museum and never tire of the displays.

 
Our first trip we hit right, with hardly anyone else there; on the second trip, the week of mid-winter break brought us face to face with hordes of vacationing schoolkids and, at every turn, a phalanx of mothers wielding an impenetrable shield of strollers. Some of us felt John should have the yellow signal flags carried aloft by day-care providers, so at our February club meeting he was given one with the following: