LOVERS OF BIRDS—AND EGGS.
An almost savage attack on oologists is printed in the latest number of Bird Notes and News, the organ of the R.S.P.B. (82 Victoria Street). It is worth wide notice on many accounts. It records recent convictions, it announces the revolt of the Ornithological Club against the oologists as the result of a dinner where one member showed 500 complete clutches of Red-Backed Shrikes' eggs ; and it concludes with an extremely interesting account of the Kite, which the egg-collectors have virtually annihilated. The Kite nested in London in 1777. It was very abundant early in the nineteenth century. Then the game preservers more than decimated it and the egg-collectors did the rest. Since 1914 a few nests have been preserved in most years, but only by continuous watching. But in 1931 a clutch of newly- taken Kites' eggs was shown by an oologist. The article is the most polemical ever printed in Bird Notes and News but 99 per cent. of bird lovers will be on the side of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in this matter, though it has recently been severely criticized in several papers devoted to country subjects. I have personally gone into enough episodes to feel quite sure that as soon as a species grows rare the coup de grdce is almost always delivered by the egg- collector. It was so with the last pair of honey buzzards to nest in England. Mr. Witherby, who knows more than anyone else, was right when he said "The collecting of
• British-taken' eggs is a mania, and it can be called nothing else." Our one hope of preserving any rare bird lies in the activity of such local watchers as serve the R.S.P.B. and such keepers of sanctuaries as the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust. The more funds that arc available for providing such men the better.
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