CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The Nuttall Ornithological Club, the nation’s oldest birding group, was having a meeting, and Ron Lockwood, its president, was calling things to order.

“We are going to waive the secretary’s report,” he told the 50 or so people crowding the room early this month. “I don’t know of any old business or any new business.”

Nearby, a cinereous vulture appeared to listen intently. The gray-brown bird, stuffed and displayed on a cabinet, was one of the reasons Mr. Lockwood was so ready to rush through the club agenda. The group was meeting at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, in the rooms housing its enormous and encyclopedic bird collection, and the members wanted to start looking around.

There was plenty to see. The museum collection is the fifth largest in the world, and the staff members had set out some treasures — a brace of golden pheasants Lafayette gave to Washington; the world’s smallest bird, the aptly named bee hummingbird, found only in Cuba; and a red-throated loon shot by John James Audubon himself.