Ms. Fannye A. Cook started the MMNS ornithology collection in the 1930's as part of the WPA Program, although some of Ms. Cook's earliest specimens were collected in the mid-1920s, about ten years before the WPA work began. These collections made by Ms. Cook and others during the WPA project would later form the basis for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.
The MMNS ornithology collection houses and documents the diversity, status, distribution, and ecology of Mississippi‘s birds through time, and makes these specimens and their data available for educational and research purposes. The MMNS ornithology collection is the largest single repository for Mississippi bird specimens and their data.
The collection includes approximately 10,000 study skins, and mounted and fluid preserved specimens, approximately 900 sets of eggs, and a growing bioacoustics collection. Skeletal materials are housed in the Comparative Osleology Collection, and tissues are maintained in the Genetic Resources Collection. Over 400 species are represented from throughout the state, but also from other states and foreign countries.
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