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On Rasmussen’s passion for detail

The bulk of Rasmussen’s work relies on study skins – the preserved bodies of birds cataloged and stored in museums. The skins are essentially historic artifacts in drawings, allowing scientists to study them, and illustrators to properly reproduce their images.

She relied on vast collections at the Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of Natural History, the British Natural History Museum in Tring, outside of London, as well as at MSU and the University of Michigan to document The Ripley Guide. Yet her meticulous nature couldn’t tolerate the inconsistencies, however slight, in measurement. So she re-measured all the birds. That amounted to 1,441 species, and within that, different races, males and females. Ultimately, that meant measuring what she estimates to be tens of thousands of birds.

“Fortunately, we were able to divide the guide into two volumes,” she said. “There’s a lot of information packed in there.”