Down with oology!

If you meet a man who says he is an oologist, wait till nobody is looking, and push him off a cliff. Oology sounds like a serious scientific study, but it isn't. An oologist is just a collector of birds' eggs. A thief, a destroyer. Believe it or not, there are still a few of these scoundrels operating in Britain.
There is a dwindling band of ageing collectors, most of whom live in south coast resorts. Fortunately they are dying, one by one, and good riddance. Then there are the fit young men who do the actual collecting for these geriatrics. These young men are good at what they do: they can find the most difficult nests, climb the most impossible trees and cliffs, and deliver their booty to the old guys for thirty pieces of silver. A very few collect for their own amusement, and these are the most dangerous. And the most difficult to catch. The RSPB has a whole department devoted to hunting them down.
The worst of it is that the rarer the bird, the more the collectors want its eggs. And they don't just take one egg: they take the whole nest with the clutch in it.
I helped to warden the last Red-backed Shrike's nest in England, because we knew that it was the only one left in the country and therefore a target for the eggers. The bird is now effectively extinct in Britain.
Birds' eggs can be stunningly beautiful, especially in the case of species which nest in exposed places and therefore need to camouflage their eggs. Waders (AmEng Shorebirds) and seabirds like Terns and Auks are good examples. The problem is that these are the eggs most likely to show interesting variations, so the egger doesn't want a single example, he wants a whole series.
Nowadays, egg collecting is not just illegal, it is generally regarded as morally reprehensible. No youngster today would dream of making a collection, which is very different from my young day. If you want to see birds' eggs, visit a museum; that's where all these ill-gotten collections belong.

Grandpa, did you collect birds' eggs when you were a boy?
Like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. No, I didn't.
I don't believe you.
Well, ok, maybe I collected a few. Just a small collection, you know.
Grandpa, let's take a walk along the cliff top...