The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg
Tim Birkhead
Birdlife's Spoon-billed Sandpiper campaign
Like many birdwatchers, I have never taken a great deal of interest in birds’ eggs. Probably as a result of the stigma associated with collecting and disturbing birds at the nest, I have never actively sought their eggs, indeed I have bent over backwards to avoid encountering them.
I therefore approached this book with minimal prior knowledge of the subject but with high hopes of an informative read. Tim Birkhead is well known as the author of a growing list of science titles including The Wisdom of Birds, Bird Sense and Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin. In these, and others, he has demonstrated the rare gift of being able to explain often complex scientific material in an engaging and accessible way, and with experience of studying Guillemots and their eggs since 1972, no-one is better equipped to write this book.
The content is introduced through the familiar notion that Guillemot eggs are shaped as they are so that, if disturbed, they spin on the breeding ledge and don’t fall over the edge. Disappointingly, however, this comforting tale turns out to be a myth. From this attention-grabber the book moves on to address all aspects of bird egg biology, with a particular focus on the Guillemot. In the book’s eight main chapters we are given a full exploration of how shell is produced, how and why eggs are coloured, the nature and purpose of the albumen, the role of the yolk and the process of fertilisation, laying, incubation and hatching.
Although the science is detailed and fascinating, I was more interested in the historical contexts, in particular the history of egg collecting, much of which is revealed through the exploits of the book’s central character, the nineteenth century Lancashire lawyer and obsessive collector George Lupton. Lupton was a frequent visitor to the bird cliffs at Bempton from which he amassed a large collection of Guillemot and other eggs. Now residing at the British Museum, it acts as testament to the scale of the harvest undertaken in the years before protection legislation.
The book also delves deeply into the history of ornithology back to Willughby, Tristram, Wallace and Darwin but focuses inevitably on the work of historical and contemporary seabird scientists. Of these the most interesting by far is the twentieth century Russian ornithologist Lew Belopol’skii whose particularly full c.v. includes being shipwrecked in sea ice in the Bering Strait, acclaimed as a hero of the Soviet Union and installed as guardian of a seabird reserve in the Barents Sea, feeding the wartime inhabitants of Murmansk on seabirds and finally, thanks to being related to his brother, being banished to a Siberian gulag.
Published: Apr 2016: Bloomsbury
Hardback: 296 pages
ISBN: 9781408851258
RRP: £16.99
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Another entertaining dimension to the book is provided by the author’s anecdotes from his own researches and museum visits. One can only imagine the professional burden of being allowed to handle the British Museum’s six Great Auk eggs and the sense of amazement at coming across Willughby’s egg collection from the seventeenth century!
The main text is complemented by a very extensive Notes section occupying 24 pages and a further 20 page bibliography. A section of eight full colour plates occupies the centre of the book and features a fine array of images including sepia-toned prints of Lupton and his cliff-climbing colleagues (including his ten-year-old daughter) and colour photographs showing the full diversity to be found in Guillemot eggs. In terms of the book’s overall look (as well as its writing style) I was much reminded of Nick Davies’s The Cuckoo from the same publisher.
Those with a scientific bent will find much of interest here but there is a lot more to this book than a collection of facts. The more general reader will enjoy the rich ornithological history and the entertaining anecdotes which turn what might otherwise have become a dry exercise in bird biology into a highly engaging (and ongoing) story of discovery.
Andy Stoddart
13 April 2016
Commission for Conservation
Rare Bird Alert does not profit from the sale of books through Wildsounds. Instead we are part of their Commission for Conservation programme where a percentage of every sale made through RBA helps supports BirdLife's Spoon-billed Sandpiper Fund.
