They are not ostriches. They are rheas. #1

My name is Francis Patrick Fowler and I am a history major with a minor in public history at UMBC at the Shady Grove campus.  My internship is at the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Bird House, where I have volunteered for several years.  I get in around 6:30am and leave around 3:00pm.  My regular volunteer duties include cleaning bird exhibits, setting up diets, and many other things related to the animals themselves.  My special project for this internship as it pertains to the field of public history is related to working on Bird House exhibits. 

One of the birds in the Bird House collection is the Greater Rhea, a large flightless bird from South America.  I will be helping the studbook keeper at the Zoo for Rheas.  The Rheas studbook is a database with the names, hatch dates and paring of Rheas in North American zoos dating back to the late nineteenth century.  I will be creating a natural history of Rheas section that provides historical information leading up to when Rheas first came to American zoos during the early part of the twentieth century.    

One might wonder why blend scientific data with human history.  A section from a report on a history of conservation exhibit at the Bird House shows that studying both the natural world and the history of how people have interacted with it is important:

Historians of conservation and ecology desire the conservation of stories and thought as a part of the humanities.  Scientists value the conservation of the natural world. Public historians and scientists create exhibits on the history of conservation and ecology with different purposes yet one goal unites them.  Their shared goal is to enact a greater perspective of time and change to create interest, concern, and stakeholders to conserve history and the natural world.  To do this, three approaches are offered by Fish and Wildlife historian Mark Madison: perspectives on the past, connections to these legacies and conserving history along with wildlife.

Perspectives on the past and connections to those legacies will show some of the mythologies, nature writings and human values that have been placed on the Rhea.  Conserving wildlife, along with understanding the historical relationship between people and animals, is a key component to scientific and conservation accomplishments. 

Greater Rhea trio (Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures/Corbis)