Recently a lovely old friend of ours bequeathed me his childhood egg collection housed in a gorgeous old tin. He had been an avid young scientist as a boy growing up in Europe before moving to Tasmania and knowing my fascination and love of birds and their nests he thought I would appreciate them. How right he was!
A few have old labels that he had stuck on with sticky tape - old and yellowing now, but I rather like them. Most are small blue, white, speckled or brownish eggs but there is one large Black Guillemot egg which is rather extraordinary. From a medium-sized seabird found throughout the northern Atlantic coasts it has a rather amazing dark colouration on the base of the egg which also has quite a pointed shape at the narrower end.
These eggs are incredibly fragile and so at this stage I will leave them just as they were given to me - carefully nestled into the tin box with shredded red and old burnished glassine paper until I find a more suitable storage arrangement. I think I will try to research the different kinds of eggs that are not labelled and investigate what the bird and their nests are like which will be really interesting to do. Our local museum has some wonderful old egg collections that I may be able to use for my research. Do you have any natural collections that you treasure?
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