Cream-coloured courser (Cursorius cursor)

Facts

• Cream-coloured Coursers eat mostly insects, foraging on foot, usually running in short dashes. They breed in North and Central Africa, Central and Southern Asia, and winter in India.

• As well as preparing animals and birds for local sportsmen, taxidermist Edward Hart started his own collection. Most of his specimens were taken between 1867 and 1897. In 1866, his collection was large enough to open a museum.

• Shortly before Edward's death in 1928, the collection was offered for sale. Most of the cases were purchased by John Hall of Stafford. For the next few years until his death, Edward Hart corresponded with John Hall, a keen ornithologist, sending batches of bird records to him for checking and answering enquiries regarding some of the cases of birds.

• After the death of John Hall, Edward Hart’s collection was passed to Stowe School in Buckinghamshire where it remained until 1923. The collection was, by this time, in a sad state of neglect and staff at Leicester Museum took them on for conservation and safe storage.

• In the early 1980's, Stowe School offered the Edward Hart collection for sale and it was purchased by the Horniman Museum, Leicester Museum and Hampshire County Council Museums Service. Twenty two cases were purchased by the latter and chosen, not only as fine examples of taxidermy, but also because the backgrounds show Christchurch at the time the birds were collected.