Existing comment:
Mounted South American Guanay Cormorant, 1976
The guanay cormorant was once called "the most valuable bird in the world." Cormorants and other guano-producing seabirds on South America's Pacific coast bred on small offshore islands, where they faced no natural predators.
Loan from National Museum of Natural History, Division of Birds
Swan Island Guano. Around 1900
Swan Island was one of a group of three tiny guano islands in the northwestern Caribbean off Honduras. The island group was sold and resold multiple times in the 19th century on account of the seabird guano's high phosphate content. |