The numbers alone are striking. The Vienna material comprises 206 study skins, 11 taxidermy mounts, 13 osteological specimens, including ten skulls and one complete skeleton, and a remarkable 546 egg specimens that originate from the oological collection of Dr Othmar Reiser, one of the most prolific ornithologists ever to work in the Balkans. This egg collection had never been fully inventoried before, and its publication here for the first time represents a significant addition to the documented biodiversity record of the region. In total, the specimens span 34 families, 69 genera and 84 species, meaning that roughly one third of all bird species ever recorded in Montenegro are physically represented in a single foreign museum.

Why does a small Balkan country command such attention? Montenegro hosts around 348 bird species, nearly a third of all species found across the entire Palaearctic realm, packed into a territory smaller than many European regions. The explanation lies in geography. The country sits at the junction of Mediterranean, Alpine and continental faunal elements, and this heterogeneity produces exactly the kind of taxonomic complexity that fascinates scientists: sympatric subspecies, colour morphs and hybrids that blur the boundaries between closely related species. For researchers studying how new forms arise and how ranges shift over centuries, historical museum specimens from such contact zones are irreplaceable, because they capture genetic and morphological snapshots of populations before the modern era of habitat change.

The story of how these specimens arrived in Vienna is itself a window into the political geography of nineteenth-century science. Most of the continental Balkans remained under Ottoman rule and largely inaccessible to researchers until the late 1800s. When the Austro-Hungarian monarchy expanded its influence, its naturalists rushed in, competing to describe new taxa from unexplored territory. The era culminated in Othmar Reiser’s monumental Ornis Balcanica, whose fourth volume, co-authored with Ludwig Führer, made Montenegro one of the ornithologically best-studied countries of its time. Reiser himself collected approximately 10,000 bird specimens and thousands of eggs during his Balkan career and published 87 scientific papers, some in local languages. Much of his material survives in Vienna and Sarajevo, and the new study demonstrates that it still holds scientific value more than a century later.

The collectors behind the Vienna material were not academics but, for the most part, soldiers. Military officers Ernst Grossmann and Johann Polatzek dominated the skin collection, gathering specimens during their service around the Bay of Kotor, the deep fjord-like inlet on the Adriatic coast that then formed part of the Austro-Hungarian province of South Dalmatia. Grossmann alone collected 126 specimens across 51 taxa, including the study’s most important type specimens, while Polatzek contributed 64 specimens. The egg material tells a different story: 532 of the 546 eggs were collected by Führer between 1894 and 1900, mainly in the central lowlands around Podgorica and Tuzi. About 77 percent of all study skins come from the Boka Kotorska area, a concentration that reflects both the duration of military postings and a pronounced scientific interest in Mediterranean birdlife.

Among the 776 objects, a few stand out as genuine treasures. The oldest specimen of Montenegrin origin preserved in any European museum is a mounted Spur-winged Lapwing, caught near Kotor in May 1857 by Julius Finger. Its history reads like a detective story reconstructed from original letters and society records. The label erroneously records 1859 and a conflicting locality, leading Reiser and later authors to doubt whether the species was ever really present in Montenegro. But archival documents show that Finger reported the find to the Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna in December 1857, the same year the bird was caught, and even noted that the distinctive lapwing had been observed by Prince Danilo himself along the River Crnojevića. The accumulated evidence points to a capture in May 1857 at Njeguši, on the mountain road between Kotor and the old royal capital of Cetinje. For over a century this remained the only Montenegrin record of the species, until a recent sighting at the Ulcinj saline.

Equally significant are the type specimens, the physical anchors of scientific names. The Vienna collection holds the holotype of the Mediterranean Linnet, Linaria cannabina mediterranea, described by Viktor von Tschusi in 1903 from a bird caught near Kotor in 1901, and one of the very few bird taxa described from Montenegro that is still considered valid today. A second type, a syntype of the Alpine Accentor subspecies once named Accentor collaris reiseri, now a junior synonym, was collected at Kosmač near Budva in 1899. The wheatear material tells a more modern taxonomic tale: for more than a hundred years, ornithologists could not reliably distinguish the eastern and western forms of the Black-eared Wheatear, but recent biometric and genetic analyses show that the eastern Adriatic coast is inhabited exclusively by what is now recognised as the full species Oenanthe melanoleuca, the Eastern Black-eared Wheatear. Accordingly, the study reassigns nine specimens collected at Sutomore in 1895, previously labelled as the western form, to the eastern species. With 38 skins and 43 taxa entries, it is the best-represented species in the entire Montenegrin holdings.

Perhaps the most poignant dimension of the collection is what it reveals about extinction. Three species that were common breeders in Montenegro at the end of the nineteenth century, the Egyptian Vulture, the White-tailed Eagle and the Lesser Kestrel, are today regarded as extinct breeding species in the country. The Vienna drawers hold their bodies and their eggs: two Egyptian Vultures collected by Führer without precise locality data, White-tailed Eagle eggs taken at Skadar Lake in February 1894 when the species was a common breeder around that vast waterbody, and a clutch of Lesser Kestrel eggs gathered in Herceg Novi in 1909. The Dalmatian Pelican material carries a similar message. Eggs collected at the former Zogaj Lake near Ulcinj in 1895 prove that pelicans bred there even after an initial drainage attempt in 1885 had turned the freshwater lagoon brackish, but the colony was permanently abandoned after the lake was fully drained in 1934. Today the species survives in Montenegro only at Skadar Lake. In total, five species in the collection carry a global Red List status and 21 are listed in Annex I of the EU Birds Directive.

The collection also preserves subtle evidence of shifting ranges that no contemporary survey could provide. The Black-headed Yellow Wagtail subspecies feldegg, a regular sight in Montenegro today, is conspicuously absent from the historical material: of ten well-preserved wagtail specimens, none shows the characteristic black head, and two are hybrids. The documented breeding-range changes of both feldegg and the cinereocapilla subspecies coincide strikingly with the collection period, suggesting that the Montenegrin wagtail fauna of the 1890s differed measurably from today’s. Similarly, the almost complete absence of waterfowl and woodpeckers, families that would certainly have been present, betrays the selective interests of collectors rather than any real scarcity, a cautionary reminder that historical collections reflect the collectors as much as the landscape.

The broader significance of the study extends beyond Montenegro’s borders. Political border changes have obscured the origins of many specimens, and the authors note that material attributed simply to Dalmatia, including possible syntypes of the Western Rock Nuthatch from the collection of Baron Feldegg, may in fact originate from present-day Montenegrin territory. The Dalmatian Pelican itself was described in 1832 from a Dalmatian specimen that could plausibly have come from Montenegro. The authors argue that comparable Montenegrin material likely awaits discovery in other major European museums, and that continued archival research is essential for a complete picture of the region’s historical avifauna. As museums worldwide race to digitise their holdings, this study shows what such efforts can unlock: not just tidy catalogues, but baselines against which a century and a half of environmental change, from drained lagoons to vanishing vultures, can finally be measured. The old drawers of Vienna, it turns out, were never just storage. They were a record waiting to be read.

Subject of Research: Historical bird specimens from Montenegro preserved in the Natural History Museum Vienna

Article Title: Bird specimens from Montenegro in the Natural History Museum Vienna

Article References: Vizi, A., & Berg, H.-M. (2026). Bird specimens from Montenegro in the Natural History Museum Vienna. Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna, 127, 105-135. https://doi.org/10.3897/anhmw.170849

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/anhmw.170849

Keywords: ornithology, Natural History Museum Vienna, Montenegro, museum collections, biodiversity, Othmar Reiser, Austro-Hungarian, type specimens, Dalmatian Pelican, egg collection, extinct breeders, digitisation