The public have donated most of these. They are often victims of bad weather, exhaustion or old age, animal attack or collision with a vehicle or building. They include a hoopoe, a scare migrant which was found dead in a Stratford-upon-Avon garden in June 1984.

Little is known of the origins of two of the major Victorian collections, those of Betteridge and Nicholls. However, it is believed that in common with most Victorian collections, most of the specimens contained in them were shot.

The Nicholls collection contains a little bustard that was probably shot in West Sussex between 1850 and 1900. This bird is a very rare visitor to the UK with only 110 appearances recorded up until 1999.

The bittern, a rare, shy and retiring bird of East Anglian reed-beds, is not normally associated with pubs, so imagine how shocked the landlord of The Miner's Arms in Alderman's Green Road was when this one crash-landed in his garden on 27th December 1961. The exhausted bird died two days later despite attempts to save it.

On 16th December 1968, St Peter's Vicarage in Primrose Hill Street was the unlikely venue for one of the strangest discoveries in the collections. A passer-by happened to notice a small dead bird beneath a hedge. It was later brought into the Herbert where it was identified as a Baltimore oriole originating from North America. Because of the incredible circumstances of its discovery, it was initially treated as an escape from an aviary or pet shop. In 1982 it was accepted as a genuine vagrant, only the 11th British occurance ever for this rare species.