Most birders recognize the value of bird specimens curated in research museums. Carefully-preserved skins and tissue samples provide innumerable data for understanding our bird-life. Many of us have had a chance to ogle passenger pigeons and ivory-billed woodpeckers preserved in museum drawers, but specimens of even the commonest birds provide all kinds of useful data, and examples of these species are very useful. Take robins as an example. How have contaminations in their diet changed over the past century? What are the distinctive plumage characteristics of robins from different regions here? There are lots of important research questions that can be answered only with new specimens of this familiar species. In the old days, birders shot the birds they saw. They had poor optics, and many species could be conclusively identified only in the hand, and then were often preserved as specimens. Modern science has enabled us to make far more useful studies possible with these old specimens, as well as the dead birds that have hit our windows or are found along the roadside. Modern curators learn a lot more from specimens than their predecessors often did: analysis of stomach contents, DNA, stable isotopes, etc., etc. The Ohio State University Museum is offering a new opportunity to contribute to science, the Adopt-a-Bird program; see http://www.ohiolightsout.org/adopt-a-bird/ They offer new incentives to donate specimens to the Museum. Check it out. Bill Whan ______________________________________________________________________ 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.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]