Hi,
The demise of egg collecting does have its downside of course. This is
what Michael Morcombe says in the Introduction to his Field Guide to
Australian Birds (2004 edition). He is talking about the distribution
maps found in his (and all Australian) field guides.
"The maps, while showing races and where best to find each species, do
not include breeding range. Unlike Europe and North America,
information for most Australian species is, as yet, far too sparse to
allow accurate maps that show breeding range. Maps based on sparse data
can be quite misleading.
"But nowadays few observers can find and identify nests, particularly
those that are small and well hidden. The most skilled nest finders were
egg collectors - and there are many fewer egg collectors today than in
the past - and bird photographers. Until the relatively recent advent
of powerful telephoto lenses, most birds were photographed at their
nests and the photographers became skilled at finding carefully hidden
nests of species such as the Rufous-crowned Emu-wren, and at spotting
the beautifully camouflaged nests of birds such as the Sittella, the
Lemon-bellied Flycathcher, the Southern Scrub-Robin and nightjars, to
name but a few.
"The demise of the nineteenth century practive of egg collecting and the
decline of bird-at-nest photography may have resulted in slightly less
disturbance of birds at their nests. But this was never significant,
except in the case of very rare species, compared with predation by
cats, foxes, raptors and goannas, or the take-over of nest hollows by
introduced birds and bees. Even one pair of Square-tailed Kite, a
native species of raptor that preys on small birds' nestlings, would
each year account for the loss of more birds than would the disturbance
caused by all the egg collectors and photographers of yore.
"As a result of this gradual loss of observers skilled in finding nests,
fewere nest sites and breeding ranges are recorded nowadays.
Consequently, early nest records nad photographs that have acdded to the
overall bank of bird knowledge, along with collections of birds skins in
museums, are likely to increase in significance with time."
Cheers
Andrew
Tony Russell wrote:
Hm ! See what you mean Carl.
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Clifford
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 1:36 PM
To: Tony Russell
Cc: 'Evan Beaver'; 'Birding-aus'
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Egg Collectors?
Many, many (now sane) birders.... sane?...birders?....where?
Carl Clifford
On 30/10/2007, at 1:50 PM, Tony Russell wrote:
Evan, many many (now sane) birders started off in life as mad egg
collectors - I was one myself until aged about twelve. The trick was to
get the contents out without breaking the shell and then display them to
your friends - those with the best and biggest collections held the most
status. Seems barbaric to me now but that's how it was before I took a
different approach to birds and conservation. Maybe some people are
still back there in the dark ages and we need to guard against their
activities. No doubt there are still others out there prepared to run
the gauntlet of our laws, collecting eggs of desirable species for
commercial sale, and they need to be stopped too. Others collect for
museums, but I won't go there.
Tony the ex Pom.
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Evan Beaver
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 11:19 AM
To: Birding-aus
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Egg Collectors?
Birders,
Now I'm treading carefully here, in an effort to better understand a
contraversial subject. Recently there was talk of a Painted HE nest and
the potential problems of disclosing this due to egg collectors. Now, my
question is this: What are egg collectors up to? Collecting for export
to hatch somewhere else? I would have thought this pretty unreliable,
keeping the egg alive. Do they actually collect the eggs and catalogue
them in some sort of collection? Either way it sounds very dodgy and not
at all to be encouraged. Unless of course they have a penchant for
Indian Mynah eggs.
EB
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