Baglieri-Benanti collection

The collection consists of 419 specimens, all mounted on bases. 21 of the 22 orders and 62 of the 71 families of Italian avifauna are represented, and so are 281 of the 584 species listed in the checklist of Italian birds. There are species of particular interest for their rarity, including the Lesser Spotted Eagle (there are only about twenty confirmed reports since 1959) and the Peregrine Falcon subspecies calidus (a rare winter visitor in Sicily).

The collection was assembled in the years 1956-1988 by two naturalists, Avv. Salvatore Baglieri and Dr. Giovanni Benanti, and in 1989 it was bought by the Museum of Zoology. The collection, arranged according to a systematic criterion (the catalog created by Grasso & Ientile, 1999 is available), is kept in 6 cabinets located along the corridor leading to the museum and in another 6 antique wooden cabinets, located on the first floor of the museum.

Interesting was the discovery, during the re-cataloging of the collections by prof. Rosario Grasso and Dr. Renzo Ientile, of a specimen of eastern yellow-headed wagtail (Motacilla citreola), a species that nests in the northern Palearctic, therefore Northern Europe, Siberia, and winters in Southeast Asia, which has only rarely been sighted in our latitudes , only 8 times in Italy of which 2 in Sicily, but always in the spring period, while this specimen was captured in winter period on 30 December 1974 at Saline di Siracusa, as evidenced by the partial livery of the specimen, which in fact had begun the winter moult.