Recent Birds Collection — Mounted Specimens and Skins

The collection was created in the period 1889—1892 with bird specimens bought from different foreign collections from different parts of the world. Initially the collection was created by the Bulgarian King Ferdinand I. Later a large number of stuffed birds collected on the former and nowadays territory of Bulgaria were collected. First curators of the collection were German scientists as well as the Danish zoologist Knud Andersen (1901—1904). Afterwards (after 1928) curators were Bulgarian zoologists, among them some of the most famous Bulgarian ornithologists as Pavel Patev, Nikolay Boev, Stefan Donchev and Zlatozar Boev. Collection consists of skins and mounted specimens of birds from all continents and zoogeographical zones. More considerable amount of stuffed birds have origin from Europe, Middle East, S and SE Asia, Central and S America, Africa. Skin collection consists of tens and in some cases — hundreds of specimens of particular species, including almost all species found in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian ornithologists Pavel Patev, Alexander Prostov and Stefan Donchev have great contribution for the formation of that collection. The bird collection has been an object of comprehensive inventory, has it own inventory book, inventory numbers of each specimen and it is digitalised (in Access) at 80%, but without photographs applied. Collection is stored in four depots and in the exhibition halls. The largest depot is renewed and modern, climatised, but full at 100%.The other 3 depots are small and hardly store all the existing stuffed birds.

Nowadays the collection consist of 15600 stuffed birds from approximately 1500 species. In that number are included about 4300 mounted birds from 1116 species and 11300 bird skins of 1289 species.