collecting

[Panza, Robin]

This reminds me of a woman who once saved salvaged birds for us, back when
we could accept salvages from the public.  She was told to include where and
when it died.  She saved up a freezer-full of carcasses and brought them in.
Half of them had 'where' down to which window of the house it hit and which
compass direction the window faced, what shrubs were under or near the
window, whether it was lawn or garden.  'When' included hour and minute, and
weather (including cloud cover, temperature, and windspeed).

Halfway through the season she got tired of writing all that down about each
bird, so she stopped taking any data at all.  Feast or famine!

Robin

Robin K Panza                  panzar at carnegiemuseums.org
Collection Manager, Section of Birds      ph:  412-622-3255
Carnegie Museum of Natural History       fax: 412-622-8837
4400 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh  PA  15213-4080  USA



-----Original Message-----
The difficulty I have most encountered is getting the location, habitat, and
date information out of collectors. Non-taxonomists are not familiar with
this
simple (seemingly obvious) requirement for every specimen lot to be
labelled for provenance.

  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.cri.nz>