By ROBERT KYLE
Antique Week Correspondent A story that recently played out in England shows why auctioneers must know their laws concerning birds and animals, even if those birds or animals have been dead for centuries.
British auctioneer Jim Railton thought nothing of it, when he took a consignment of a circa 1900 specimen cabinet that contained eggs equally as old. They included eggs of kestrels, guillemots, herring gulls, razorbills, and “common garden species.”
He advertised the cabinet with eggs in his auction advertising. That’s when Railton came to the attention of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Police entered his sales room in November, seized a chest containing old eggs and removed Railton as well. Transported to the police station in Berwick, he was read his rights and told he had violated Section 6 of The 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act.
The auctioneer had never heard of it, but soon learned it targets any person who “sells, offers or exposes for sale, or has in his possession or transports for the purpose of sale, any live bird … or an egg of a wild bird or part of such an egg; or publishes or causes to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that he buys or sells, or intends to buy and sell, any of those things …”
“I was there for two hours, Railton told London’s Daily Mail. “They kept asking me where the eggs had come from, who the vendor was, and where he had gotten them.”
The egg trail led to consignor Mark Gough, an executive with UK’s National Health Service. He told police he had inherited the collection from his mother. Gough was not charged. There were 54 whole and parts of eggs in the specimen cabinet Gough consigned to Railton last fall. Because each egg represents a separate violation, the auctioneer was facing 54 counts at a maximum fine of $7,600 each, or about $410,500 total.
Railton, an animal lover himself, appeared at his March 10 trial sporting a tie from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds of which he was once a member. He is currently a director of the Chillingham Wild Cattle Assoc. At sentencing on March 31, the judge found the defendant guilty of two counts: offering the eggs for sale and advertising them in his fall catalog. The auctioneer was fined the U.S. equivalent of $1,527 plus $106 court costs and a $23 victim’s surcharge.
It was unclear who the victim was in this case, unless it was the 54 birds that laid the eggs long ago.
Railton told the judge he was unaware the eggs were illegal to sell. “As an auctioneer you should have known, and ignorance of the law is never a defense,” the Daily Mail quoted magistrate Terry Broughton who presided.
Eggs from chickens, ducks, game birds and those bred in captivity are not covered under the law. Railton has been in the antiques profession for more than 30 years. He opened Railton’s Antiques Auctioneers & Valuers in 1993.
In the United States the Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal to possess most birds and their nests, feathers and eggs. Exceptions are the house sparrow, pigeon, starling and non-migratory game birds. For information, go to www.npwrc.usgs.gov/about/faqs/birds/feathers.htm |
