Egg Collecting
People Have Been Collecting Birds' Eggs for Centuries, A Practice That Can Be Hard on Bird Populations
Oology, the study of eggs, can be source of valuable information about birds. The practice is frowned upon today however, because of the impact on bird populations.
Oology is the study of eggs, a useful pastime if we are trying to learn about birds but a potential problem if the eggs are being removed from the nest. Egg collecting has been a popular hobby for centuries. Egg collectors get great pleasure from the challenge of acquiring eggs – both finding the nest and getting to it – and displaying their collections. It’s true that bird’s eggs can be very beautiful and many are quite distinctive.
Unfortunately, things can get out of hand with oology and egg collecting, as when the collector takes all of the eggs in the nest, or many collectors go after eggs of a species that is dwindling in numbers. Even disturbing the nest can make adult birds desert their eggs or reveal nest locations to predators. Egg collecting is so detrimental to threatened birds, in fact, that collecting and possessing wild birds’ eggs has been forbidden in many places (it has been illegal in the US since about 1918).
A recent discovery, in Britain, of a collection of between 5,000 and 10,000 wild bird eggs gives us an idea of the impact that a single avid bird collector can have on bird populations. Collecting wild birds’ eggs has been illegal there since 1954. Read the story at the link below.
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