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egg thefts (1 Viewer)

Like with other poachers, give them a chance to repent and use their skills for conservation. If they fall back on their old habits, boom headshot. Problem solved, either way.


RE Birder said:
A large number of 'older' birders I speak to have often got into birding in that way and fully admit to having taken eggs.
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Yes, but those were different times, as was mentioned. You have to take into account a process of cultural refinement (meaning for example an increasing unwillingness to deliberately harm animals), which was enabled by food abundance and easier access to higher education post-WWII.


Where is the next generation of younger birder coming from, i doubt its from behind the playstation? We have a mass shortage of younger birders in my area.
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For myself and a couple of others (assuming my generation counts as "younger birders"), I can safely say it wasn't egging. I did read a lot of old books back then that mentioned it as a hobby for young people, but I remember that even a book (about keeping birds) from the early fifties argued against it.
Egging never seemed like a plausible occupation to me, and I don't know of any (younger) birder or naturalist who's ever been involved in that. From my limited personal experience, I think it's more collecting feathers or sea shells, or watching documentaries.
 
RE Birder said:
I worry too about the general photographer/birder who has no knowledge of the law. Are they more of a threat than the diminishing egger.
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I'm not sure who you think the "general photographer/birder who has no knowledge of the law" is. It is certainly possible to get into birding off one's own bat, buy a copy of the Collins Guide (which to my astonishment I've just discovered makes no mention of birds and the law even in a European context) and avoid any contact with other books, RSPB reserves and publications, birders, photographers, the internet and so on. But is it likely? I don't think it is.

You are more likely to find that a coffee-morning and group-trip frequenting member of a local RSPB group is ignorant of the bird-protection provisions of the law than a birder who is sufficiently keen on the photographic aspects of their hobby to start working their way through the list by specific trips to record all that they can.

Do you have an issue with birder-photographers?

John
Birder-Photographer
 
Of course I don't John, I am a birder/photographer myself. Recent convictions of photographers at WTSE site and Peregrine Falcon in the SW spring to mind although I know this is a very small minority. As are of course the eggers...
 
Sangahyando said:
Like with other poachers, give them a chance to repent and use their skills for conservation. If they fall back on their old habits, boom headshot. Problem solved, either way.


Yes, but those were different times, as was mentioned. You have to take into account a process of cultural refinement (meaning for example an increasing unwillingness to deliberately harm animals), which was enabled by food abundance and easier access to higher education post-WWII.


For myself and a couple of others (assuming my generation counts as "younger birders"), I can safely say it wasn't egging. I did read a lot of old books back then that mentioned it as a hobby for young people, but I remember that even a book (about keeping birds) from the early fifties argued against it.
Egging never seemed like a plausible occupation to me, and I don't know of any (younger) birder or naturalist who's ever been involved in that. From my limited personal experience, I think it's more collecting feathers or sea shells, or watching documentaries.
Click to expand...


I'm quite glad the younger generation are not thinking about it, I certainly didn't being 35 now I never really knew much about it, it was my father that got me involved in birding. I certainly wasn't advocating getting kids into egging, just concerned at the moment as very few young people in my part if the country are getting involved. Despite attempts by the local society to encourage it
 
RE Birder said:
Of course I don't John, I am a birder/photographer myself. Recent convictions of photographers at WTSE site and Peregrine Falcon in the SW spring to mind although I know this is a very small minority. As are of course the eggers...
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...subsides back into coma with a last rumble.....

John
 
A a lot of the old timers are old collectors, my mentor on the BTO Nest Record scheme is a ex-collector/copper, country lad nothing to do. Most of the convictions on the RSPB website the individuals seam to be in there 40/50, so I hope they are a dying breed. The egg is beautiful, all the intricate markings, but it's the beauty within what I and many others crave to see at the end of a breeding season.
 
It was self obsessed morons like that that got all of us, birders / twitchers / photographers alike, a bad name on Scilly in the 80's John. While there are people like that around I'm afraid it's 'big bucket of tar and a really wide brush' time. Egg collecting - that is a totally different matter. They should be harvested for their organs.

Chris
 
chris butterworth said:
It was self obsessed morons like that that got all of us, birders / twitchers / photographers alike, a bad name on Scilly in the 80's John. While there are people like that around I'm afraid it's 'big bucket of tar and a really wide brush' time. Egg collecting - that is a totally different matter. They should be harvested for their organs.

Chris
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They don't have a heart

John
 
locustella said:
Actually everything had been collected a long time ago.
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There are many groups that still need collecting to determine species, particularly among the invertebrates. I've been working with Mytilus Mussels and without collecting specimens and determining the species, in the lab, we wouldn't have 10% of the knowledge we now have. You can't identify them by their shells, their soft parts or genitalia, only by their genetics, and to prevent the possibility of cross contamination you need to do that in a laboratory. That you can claim everything has already been collected makes me wonder where the thousands of new species identified each year are coming from. Scientific collecting will always be needed even with advances in genetic sampling for the simple reason, we do not, and possibly never will have, a complete library of the DNA of every taxon to refer to.
 
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