IS THE UNLIMITED COLLECTING OF BIRDS IN BREEDING SEASON JUSTIFIED?
A COMMUNICATION.
To My Fellow Ornithologists:—
Realizing fully that in condemning a practice which, by reason of its having been followed by many of our best ornithologists, has assumed to many the garb of propriety, I am inviting criticism and perhaps caustic criticism at that, I lay before you a matter which has impressed itself upon me for three seasons past. What I have seen of bird slaughter (and it can be known by no other name) has placed me as unalterably opposed to collecting large numbers of birds during the breeding season. It is not my wish to attempt to arouse a senseless sympathy, such as has cropped out in too many of our magazines of late, with scarcely a fact to justify it in many cases. I have kindly feelings for those of the Audubonians who are working for bird protection in a practical way, but none whatever for those who rant and criticise the current journals because they print the bird news. The theorists are all right but as useless as the fifth wheel of a coach, so long as their theories are unexecuted, save on paper. I hope to be understood as not adding another to the already long list of empty pleas with which we have been afflicted of late.
The science of ornithology demands the collecting of any reasonable number of birds to further its ends, and personally I have taken the lives of birds with as much zeal as any, when the skins were desired for actual use. Furthermore I have always been a devotee of the gun rather than the opera glass in collecting, and am at the present time a recruit in what Dr. Coues has termed the "shot-gun wing" of the ornithological army. Therefore I may presume to write without prejudice against unnecessary bird slaughter. It seems but humane that where unusual numbers of skins are collected that the time should be during the spring and fall migrations or else in winter or early summer. No sane ornithologist can condemn the shooting of one or both parents to an occasional nest, if they be desired for identification or for the collection, but it would be needless, nor is it practiced, often. To such a status it would seem that extremists in both directions might agree.
My first insight into bird slaughter in the name of science was in 1896 during my stay in the Sierras of El Dorado Co., Cal. Two well known Californian workers were touring the emigrant road, having been sent out by a third ornithologist, and were allowed ten or fifteen cents per skin for such of the take as he could use. This was, of course, an incentive to collect everything in sight, which I must say, regretfully, was done. Each day these collectors roamed the woods and hills and every bird which had the confidence to present itself to view, paid for its temerity with its life. In the Sierras many species are typical, such as Pipilo maculatus megalonyx, and others which are not hoped to show any perceptible variation. Yet in 1896 species such as Cassin's Vireo, Spurred Towhee, various warblers etc. were collected without limit, as many as thirty to fifty of some being taken. Most of these were not collected for the personal use or study of either of the three interested parties, but to be sold for a paltry sum, if indeed at all, for after the trip over rough mountain roads and being packed away when "green" for weeks, many of the skins were poor and misshapen. This was the first slaughter in the name of science which I witnessed. Perhaps 500 or 600 birds had been taken from their haunts in breeding time, the collectors had unquestionably done much hard work in warm weather, while their return was very moderate financially. Doubtless they saw and learned much of nature and the birds, as both were active workers in the field, but the glory of their seasons work has upon it a blot in the shape of unwarranted bird slaughter.
In 1897 another prominent Californian made an extended trip over the Lake Tahoe road of El Dorado County through the Sierras. He was accompanied at first by one and later by several assistants. This gentleman I count as a personal friend and a thoroughly able naturalist, who has the charm of enlivening camp life which few possess, and far be it from me to criticise his good nature or to disparage the value of his scientific work. But he waged the same heartless war-fare against the birds all through the summer and I will not venture to say how many birds were numbered in his collection when he left the Sierras, but certain it is that the number was in excess of all requirements or reason.
