Subject: Re: Beginner

From: Neil Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 11:01:56 GMT

In message  <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
> In message <[email-masked]>
>         [email-masked] ("Colin Cracknell") writes:
>
> > For me it's photographs. For
> > those who can't/don't want to take photo's, it's what? How is such a
> > person to learn the difference between Clouded Yellow & Berger's Clouded
> > Yellow without being intimately familiar with a cherished specimen of at
> > least one of them?
>
> Strange how people differ. The sight of my first Clouded Yellow (on
> the west coast of Britain) was enough). I never felt any desire or
> need to kill it and keep it to look at (but I would have liked a photograph).
>
> Now I collect many specimesn because I have a need and a reason to do
> so (Shetland is relatively poorly covered and I am still learning my
> micros). But if a suspected Berger's Clouded Yellow flew past
> tomorrow I still couldn't collect AND kill it. A value judgement I know but
> ...

On the subject of Berger's Clouded Yellow some people will remember
this item which was posted by Patrick Roper on Web 6th December 1995.
It was part of a much larger posting detailing a number of such excesses
across a range of species.

> As a final example of the difference between what I call recreational
> collecting and scientific study I would cite the example of Bernard Skinner
> who, as author of the widely used and popular Moths of the British Isles, is
> one of Britain's best-known entomologists. In 1991 it became quite
> well-known in the UK entomological community that a colony of Berger's
> Clouded Yellow, Colias alfacariensis, had established itself on England's
> south coast.  The species is a rare migrant from mainland Europe and unable
> to survive the winter.  Skinner visited the site in September 1991 and with
> Messrs Harmer and Pickles captured 16 examples of the butterfly
> (Br.J.Ent.Nat.Hist. 5: 1992, pages 51 & 52).  In all 22 males and 9 females
> were taken in the one small area where it occurred.  As I understand it they
> collected the colony out and deprived many butterfly watchers of the
> opportunity of seeing this species in Britain.  Why did they want so many
> examples?  I suspect they caught all they could catch and, again, it does
> seem to be going a bit beyond getting a voucher specimen.
ÿ
> Perhaps the most dangerous animal of all is the serious scientist (amateur
> or professional) with a collecting obsession who uses his/her position as a
> cover for activities most reasonable people would regard as unacceptable.

Following on from this consider this example. Earlier this year I visited
California and with the assistance of several subscribers to LEPS-L I
was fortunate to be able to see a rare bird, the Rufous Backed Robin, which
was only the 6th Californian specimen. Imagine what people would have thought
if I had taken a gun and shot it as a specimen for a collection.

--
Neil Jones- [email-masked] "The beauty and genius of a work of art
may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed, but when
the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more another heaven
and another earth must pass before such a one can be again." William Beebe