The Stuffed Bird Updated at Museum : Facility Plans New, Animated Exhibit

If there’s anything more boring than a glassy-eyed dead bird stuffed with excelsior, it’s 600 glassy-eyed dead birds.

The glassy-eyed creatures constitute the current somewhat yawnful collection housed in the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum’s Bird Hall--a static display that was put together as a “temporary exhibit” 39 years ago.

But that vast congregation of avian ennui will be a thing of the past by May or June of next year, according to an announcement Thursday by Ralph Schreiber, the museum’s curator of ornithology.

By then, he said with excitement, the stuffy old chamber will be supplanted by a new, vastly expanded, “state-of-the-art” Great Hall of Birds.

Schreiber said the $3.5-million hall will feature animated birds (wearing natural feathers) that move and sing and behave in considerably more realistic and lively fashion than the stiff specimens commonly seen in museums.

“When my wife (also an ornithologist) and I came to Southern California 10 1/2 years ago, we walked into this hall and said, ‘This is not very interesting,’ ” Schreiber said. “So we visited museums around the world and gathered ideas . . . and two years ago convinced the (museum’s) board of directors we should build a new bird hall as part of the institution’s 75th anniversary.”

The new hall will be part of a $35-million capital expansion program for the museum that was announced last May. A total of $1.9 million already has been raised for the ornithological project through private contributions. The principal donors have been Unocal Corp., Union Bank and Petersen Publishing Co., which fulfilled its $250,000 pledge Thursday.

Schreiber said the present 6,000-square-foot hall on the second floor of the museum in Exposition Park will be expanded to 17,000 square feet. But more important, it will be designed to make the world of birds interesting and instructive to visitors.

“We will take the birds that you see here now and put them into a classic setting,” according to the scientist.

At the outset there will be about 900 birds, many of them electronically animated.

In addition, there will be three animated bird habitats--a realistic marsh scene with ducks, geese and swans; a California condor habitat; and a tropical rain forest in which water will actually fall.

“Instead of walking up to a display and looking at it, you will be . . . transported into a totally realistic experience,” Schreiber said. “We’ll have a raccoon (for example) approaching a goose on her nest, and (the bird) will go into a threat display.”

Another innovation will be a wind tunnel “where you can manipulate a bird in a strong wind so it will teach the principles of aerodynamic flight.”

Yet another will be a bird “mask” into which a visitor can thrust his head and be able to see the world as a bird sees it.

“We (humans) have binocular vision; birds can see behind them and see the predator that’s coming down to get them,” Schreiber explained.

The curator said that a computer system is now in the works that will permit visitors to call up information on specific birds from an encyclopedic memory bank. It will show video and still pictures of the animals.

To pull in the kids, an animated cartoon-like character called Prof. Percy Pelican will deliver a funny but informative invitation to youngsters touring the museum.

Percy’s voice is that of comedian Jonathan Winters, who, in an ultra-stuffy English accent, opens his spiel thusly:

“Hi there! I am Prof. Percy Pelican. I have been a bird all my life, you know. . . .”