Photo: Chip Clark

The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, United States is home to over 126 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks and other artefacts. As with all museums, a disproportionately large percentage of the collection is stored behind the walls, with only a small number of items put on public display. These items are not sitting in some dark basement and gathering dust, but meticulously organised, labelled, catalogued and preserved in one of many backrooms. In this picture, feather identification expert Roxie Laybourne can be seen amid a portion of the museum’s bird backroom collection.