Re: Roadkills

Museums are interested in any specimens.  You would be surprised just how few specimens museums hold of common species.  I recently had a look at the Freckled Ducks held at the Australian Wildlife Collection at CSIRO, Canberra.  They have next to no Black Duck (they were all eaten by the researchers who were working on ducks in a big way from the 1950's to the 70's).

Museum collections will never be complete as they are endeavouring to have representative specimens from all parts of a species distribution.  For those fortunate (or rich) enough to have access to Schodde & Mason's book "The Directory of Australian Birds", the work undertaken researching this book was based on museum specimens.  The text discusses differences in taxa.  Frequently this is complicated by a lack of specimens in key areas.

You may think that there might be numerous specimens from certain areas.  This is almost never the case.  Even if this is so, it could well be that the specimen you have located is poorly represented because it is immature and female, or mature and male.  Most museums would be more than pleased to accept specimens from the public in order to increase the scientific value of their collections.  

Cheers

David Geering



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