VLEK R & A EHRENBURG (2008) A historical egg collection from the coastal dunes of Holland, 1940-1965. LIMOSA 81 (3): 102-106.

In April 2008 a fine collection of eggs, collected in the coastal dunes of the south-western part of Noord- Holland was added to the egg collection of the National Natural History Museum Naturalis in Leiden. It was formerly the private collection of Albertus Adrianus Hey (1905-1982), an employee of a bulb-growing company in Hillegom (Zuid-Holland), and a serious regional egg collector. Due to a British air raid on a railway line near his house in the very last months of the Second World War, the pre-war collection of Hey was almost completely destroyed, including its inventory. The present collection was built up again after the war. Most eggs originate from the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen between Noordwijk and Zandvoort and from the peat meadow areas north of Zaandam (Noord-Holland). Although not a large collection, it is of some historical interest because it holds clutches of several species which have disappeared as breeding bird from the Dutch coastal dunes and/or from the Netherlands at large. It holds probably the last clutch of Tawny Pipit Anthus campestris from the once small Dutch dune population, and other eggs of species no longer breeding in the Netherlands, like Stone Curlew Burhinus oedicnemus, or of species now on the brink of disappearing as such (Crested Lark Galerida cristata, Corn Bunting Miliaria calandra).

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