One of the best known of the Academy collections, consisting of 12,000 skins and more than 1,000 mounted specimens. An important addition in 1965 was the donation of 3,600 specimens from S. S. Gregory, which includes Ivory-billed Woodpeckers and Carolina Parakeets (both extinct). In all, 583 species of North American birds are represented. Thirty percent of the birds were collected before 1900, including important Illinois specimens from Robert Kennicott and Benjamin T. Gault. There is also a valuable collection of nearly 1,000 Alaskan skins.