The collection of wild bird eggshells reawkens the beauty of natural history.
The collection of wild bird eggshells reawkens the beauty of natural history. Collecting wild bird eggshells is a wonderful and remedial hobby. In festive spirit of the Easter weekend ahead chocolate eggs are secondary to this artful pastime. These authentic birds eggs that hold a unique dazzling array of colours. The spring has sprung and all art is in full praise.
A few years ago, naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham said that, “Children need to feel a tadpole tickling the palm of their hand or pull back a bramble to see a nest. I can still remember seeing my first hedge-sparrow nest. It was almost a life-changing moment. I stood there in awe at these amazing little blue eggs, barely able to believe a bird was able to make them.”
These “life-changing” moments are all but lost to the majority of today’s children, who experience nature from the comfort of their living-rooms. The best way to see birds’ eggs now is by visiting natural history museums by appointment, where one can gaze in wonder at a form of reproduction that was a revered symbol of life’s renewal pre-Christianity. Sing that to the magpies who raid the nests of songbirds across the land. Be sad at the freefall in numbers of skylarks, nightingales and cuckoos and shocked that starlings and song thrushes are on the RSPB’s “red alert” list.
Tony Ladd, ornithologist, wildlife artist and creator of beautiful replica birds’ eggs. He is the person to call upon if you are going to begin a hobby collecting wild bird eggshells. “Even in my lifetime I have noticed that children are often not aware of garden bird names and animals outside the norm. My work will, I hope, reawaken the beauty of natural history, the eggs, insects, bones and shells, which I create in a Victorian style using modern print and production techniques.’’
COLLECTING WILD BIRD EGGSHELLS
Tony Ladd’s British Wading Birds collection
It is no coincidence that most of the customers for Ladd’s egg collections are men aged 60-plus who, during a carefree youth (and pre-1954, when the law forbade it) collected birds’ eggs with the zeal with which they swapped conkers. Collecting wild bird eggshells should be completed in this tradition, following their fathers and grandfathers in what was a natural hobby, building up collections and swapping eggs, emulating the competitive Victorian ornithologist-collector. In later years, this competitiveness turned to obsession with a few sociopaths risking their lives to steal rare eggs.
For Ladd, the beauty of birds’ eggs is in their mimicry of nature. “Each one is a fingerprint series of markings with a dazzling array of colours, from blotches to streaks; the egg of the yellowhammer looks like a scrawl. Each is an original piece of artwork with no two alike, which is utterly fascinating. The patterns vary from species and within species and act as camouflage in the natural world. Except for the woodpigeon, which lays its pure-white eggs right out in the open. And then there are all the different shapes and sizes; from the large egg of the great black-backed gull to the minuscule one of the goldcrest.”