I wonder how many readers of this list understood Dave Horn's brief post yesterday referring to the Cleveland harlequin duck: "Where's Milt Trautman when we need him?": Trautman, a professor at OSU, curator at the biological museum, and expert on the birds and fishes of Ohio, was quite insistent about the importance of physical specimens to verify the occurrence of species. A hunter and fisher, he was known to deploy his net often to procure verifiable specimens of fishes and his shotgun for birds. However you may feel about this, his gun provided many records that added to the Ohio bird list; in fact, it was largely because of Trautman that so many birds many we may regard as Lake Erie specialties were collected instead as first Ohio records down in central Ohio: Eurasian Wigeon, Cinnamon Teal, King and Common Eiders, Black Scoter, Surf Scoter, Magnificent Frigatebird, Long-tailed Jaeger, Sabine’s Gull, Black-legged Kittiwake, Franklin’s Gull, etc. How many would accept these as sight records without specimens to prove them? Birders were known to object to his practice of shooting rare birds, some because he shot them before observers could see them, and others because he so obviously removed them forever from the outdoors, even while securing them a permanent place in the ornithological record, as well as museum drawers. Most of us would agree that the establishment of solid scientific first records trumps the importance of the chance that birders might add certain species to their lists. Still many of us also understand why members of the Columbus Audubon Society organized a watch to keep an eye on the first state record of a red-cockaded woodpecker to prevent Trautman from shooting it during its stay in a state park. I have a copy of a letter Milt wrote to Kark Maslowski in 1969, after the latter invited Trautman to come down to see a black-headed grosbeak in SW Ohio. Here is Trautman's tart reply: "Dear Karl: Thank you so much for notifying me of the Black-headed Grosbeak in Milford, Ohio. The record will be placed in the rapidly-expanding "fictional" list. I will not take the time to see it because it cannot be established as a factual record without collecting it...Accidentals actually mean very little; their real scientific interest lies in why or how they reached Ohio, by being wind-blown or through directional loss; in other words by either physical or mental deficiencies or both. There is little doubt in my mind that over the past 12,000 years every species of eastern North American birds and most western North American birds have been present and unobserved in Ohio at some time. My not accepting photographic proof is because even the actual specimen that is collected can be misidentified. A good example is the frequently published record of the Artic [sic] Loon Gavia arctica collected 19 February 1909 in Ashtabula County. This was accepted by the AOU and everyone else as the only authentic Ohio record until the Oberlin collection, which housed it for almost 60 years, was incorporated in the Ohio State collections. Then we discovered it was a Red-throated Loon. The excellent photograph of the Rufous-necked Sandpiper seen in September in Ashtabula County is a fine photograph of a spring-plumaged [bird]...I was given a beautiful photograph of a Long-billed Dowitcher which I collected immediately after the picture was taken. The skin is unquestionably a Long-bill, the photo unquestionably a Short-bill because of the slight angle at which the picture of the head was taken. A few years ago 200 of us saw a Green-tailed Towhee within a mile of my house at a feeder. The owner of the feeding station where it constantly free-loaded called it "Rocky." Obviously a bird with a Christian name cannot be collected so the record will be forgotten in a few years, which I guess is the best thing. Were I to accept that record and your photographs I would of necessity have to accept records of over 10,000 Red-legged Kittiwakes and California Gulls on Lake Erie and sight records of over 50 other species. The life of a scientist or a curator is not a popular or happy one." Few readers of this letter will, I think, agree with everything Trautman says, but we must acknowledge the contributions of his shotgun. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]