Fågelmuseet

Fågelmuseet is housed in a beautiful brick building, which was built for this purpose in 1914 and declared a monument in 1992. There are three permanent exhibitions within the Bird Museum, all of which deal with the bird life in Sweden.

The bird collection in Fågelmuseet

The reason for the construction of the Bird Museum was the very extensive collection of stuffed birds which the regimental doctor and hobby ornithologist Herman Nyqvist (1856 - 1923) bequeathed to the former municipal park community in 1913. With a total of 1,458 specimens from 341 bird species, this is probably the most extensive collection of its kind in Sweden.

Nyqvist shot about 1,000 specimens himself in the period from the late 19th century to 1910 and then expertly preserved them in such a way that they are still completely preserved more than 100 years later. After 1910, the collection was expanded to include accidental birds.

The bird collection shows the complete bird life in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century, as it includes all bird species that were breeding or resting in Sweden at the time of the museum's opening. Among them are also bird species that unfortunately no longer breed in Sweden, such as the puffin or the stork.

The egg collection of Fågelmuseet

In another area of the Bird Museum there is a huge collection of bird eggs and nests, which the forester Edvard Wibek (1877 - 1972) had created and which he donated to the city of Jönköping in 1943. At that time the collection consisted of eggs from about 170 Swedish bird species, which Wibek had collected both in Småland and in large parts in northern Sweden.

Later the museum bought up further egg collections, so that there are currently around 2,580 eggs of 281 species to be seen in the bird museum. The birds' eggs have been collected over a period of more than 100 years, with the oldest specimens being five eggs of a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus) dated 18 June 1866.

The photo collection in Fågelmuseet

The rooms where the birds' eggs are on display also house a valuable photo collection with around 300 photographs. These photographs, taken by Edvard Wibek and the physician Paul Rosenius (1865 - 1957), document the construction of the nest and various bird biotopes. The photographic equipment of the two ornithologists can also be seen in the exhibition.