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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xenospiza" data-source="post: 1583386" data-attributes="member: 23772">This is (of course) a recurring discussion which can lead to heated debates...Anyone who does his best to read up on some of the great field guide writers will find a few individuals who are all in favour of collecting. Some of these work for the American institutions alluded to earlier, but e.g. Australia is infamous for its collecting too. The rediscovery of the Night Parrot (as a dried-out road kill) was made by a collector ready to shoot an Australian Pratincole.The amount of birds killed for scientific purposes nowadays is usually negligible to what happens by other activities (habitat distruction, traffic, hunting, windows). I believe the White-throated Robin disappeared from Mount Hermon for a number of years in the 1970's due to overambitious egg-collecting.I can definitely see the need for series (I'd like to have a look at Green Heron skins one day – no matter how many photos have been taken and placed on the internet, these are difficult to access and compare). This includes series for (remote) localities: while sounds, measures and (possibly) DNA are easily collected on live birds, photography is not always the strongest point of the ringers involved.Collecting in well-known locations is rather unnecessary: I don't see what there would be to gain. However, musea are still happy to receive any specimens you can find, if only to replace the stuffy old ones.If you look at other groups which are either impossible to identify without taking them apart or much more numerous locally than birds, I don't see what the problem with collecting could be, apart from some very popular groups: we can't have everyone taking their own butterfly/orchid/gentian specimen home...</blockquote>

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