ORONO – The expression “a rare bird” has special meaning this summer at the University of Maine Page Farm and Home Museum.

Part of the museum’s summer exhibit includes three Nankin chickens, small ornamental birds thought to be extinct until a nesting pair was discovered in the mid-1900s on a small farm in England.

Bob Hawes of Hampden, a UMaine professor emeritus of animal veterinary and aquatic sciences, and an authority on backyard poultry-keeping, is one of a few breeders in the United States to raise the rare birds. He has loaned three to the Page Farm and Home Museum for the summer.

Chickens tie in with the central theme of the Page Museum, which keeps artifacts and information about rural Maine from the late 1800s to 1940. The chickens are a learning tool for visitors and allow museum goers to see one of the original breeds of chickens, developed in China and commonly available over a hundred years ago, said Patricia Henner, director of the farm and home museum. They were, however, thought to be extinct or nearly so by the mid-1900s.

“The Nankin is one of the oldest bantam breeds and is very rare,” Hawes said. “I was one of the few people in the country who raised them for several years, but in the last three to four years, they have been found, and there is quite a bit of interest in them.”

Originally from the Nanking region of China, the breed was introduced to England in the 1700s. Having been discovered on a small farm in England, the birds were then introduced to the United States in the 1960s. They are usually kept as pets, Hawes said.

The exhibit is available free to the public 8 a.m.-4 p.m. daily until the beginning of the fall semester at the museum in the middle of the campus.

“They are very sweet,” Henner said of the three Nankins. “If you go up to the pen and speak softly to them, they’ll come out” of their roost.

Two of the chickens are hens and are a light golden brown color, and the rooster is a bolder chestnut-red with green tail feathers. They are about the size of a common partridge. On nice days, visitors usually can find the Nankins sunning themselves or strutting, clucking and pecking at grass beneath the wire floor of the coop.

Information about the Page Farm and Home Museum programs and visitors schedules is available by calling 581-4100.