300 hours orso ago I finally had the last piece of the seashells (red starfish), put a kid on it, it got stuck somewhere and thenlost the item...i checked it's not in the cabin :-(
just now the same happened with the 11th _bug_ at 850 hours.
this is my second village, this first seem to drop goodies much quicker.
i mean it's annoying as it is, that villagers get stuck in the corner of the cabin, the black flowers spot and there's a few others, they seem to seek out.
i'm so sad now :-(

catfish, don't put the kids directly on the collectibles at thos sticky spots... you can drop the kids up to alomost 2 centimetres above and away from the sticky spots and they'll get them without sticking. If you practise dooing it with every collectible, you'll soon find you won't forget on the sticky spots

There's not much that can be done for the few sticky spots on the way to the science hut (I've lost collectibles that way myself...) but as bajantara says, with practice you can learn were there are "safe" places to pick up a kid. I usually place him/her a little bit away from the collectible towards the hut and that usually works, especially for the sticky spots near the ocean or on the mosaic.

Another thing to watch for is that if you already have one kid on his/her way with a collectible and you spot another immediately, wait until the first one is deposited in the hut, otherwise it'll get lost. (Or if the second one is that rare collectible you've been waiting for, you may be willing to let the first be dropped to make sure you get the new item.

As for the frequency, it may just be that in a second game you aren't watching it as often as the first time you played and it just seems that they show up less frequently. Or a diffeent order of tech upgrades can make a difference.

In a new game I recently started, I got very lucky and my first event gave me L2 Explore! I only have 8 villagers, just harvested my third crops, still clearing the briar patch, but I already found all of the shells, 9 butterflies and 8 pebbles!

wow that's kinda fast ;-)
my first game came to an end when there were no more fertile ladies. I hoped to get the 3 drifting children, but I had them once already, so only thing I could do is sit back and watch my tribe die off ...
I do drop the kids in a safe place... I mean it's not particularly on sticky spots, they just get tangled on their way to the hut
tip for upgrade: count the collectibles as soon as their picked up, not when they reach the hut...

Yeah, I'm pleased with how well that game is going... The collections are usually the last to complete, but I'm taking a different attitude this time.

But in any game I always make sure that I have at least one kid to pick things up (sometimes becuase of babyboom waves I have no choice to wait for someone to die). But I've never had the problem with all of the ladies getting too old.

I don't understand your upgrade tip. The collectibles don't count until they reach the hut.

i think she meant she wants the collectibles to count as soon as they are picked up

that won't work though, because nothing counts until the action is completed

all food has to be deposited in the bin before it adds to the count, researchers must kick before they get tech points added, etc

it only makes sense that the collectibles must make it all the way to the hut to count

well the corpses count as soon as they'v e been picked up, no need to drag them all the way to the graveyard to get a headstone...