Moscow Darwin museum to display stuffed extinct bird

On Thursday, the Darwin Museum will start displaying the previously unknown rarity - the only stuffed bird in Russia which is considered to be extinct nearly half a century ago.

As the head of the museum's public relations department, Urana Kuular, said, the imperial woodpecker (campephilus imperalis), one of the most enigmatic birds in the Western Hemisphere, has been found among the non-displayed specimens of the oldest nature museum.

According to her, in working with the unique collections of the museum the ornithologists found a stuffed extinct cock imperial woodpecker. Earlier, this stuffed bird was erroneously regarded as a representative of other species of the Mexican woodpecker.

The imperial woodpecker, the biggest out of the more than 200 species of woodpeckers, once lived in the pine and oak forests in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico.

The collections of the world's biggest museums do not have more than a dozen specimens of stuffed imperial woodpeckers. Therefore the specimen discovered in the Darwin Museum is of tremendous exposition and scientific value, noted Urana Kuular.