Thursday 24 March 2016

The Colour Collaborative: March: Egg






I'm rather in love with birds' eggs. That gorgeous smooth roundness and the subtleties of colour and pattern. Each egg perfectly suited to its environment both in shading and shape.

The extent of our egg collection can pretty much be seen above. We have a few more fragments, but these are our best two bits. I love the little mark on the blue egg where the chick had a go at getting out before he actually managed it.


Museums tend to have vast collections shut away in drawers, but now most of our information comes from pictures. The biggest boy has a copy of the Observer's Book of Birds' Eggs which is a favourite of mine. I never get tired of flicking through and admiring the eggs. Little speckles of grey on a
chiffchaff egg or brown watercolour stains on a willow warbler egg. All nicely done according to where the nest will be.

The shape matters as well.



Long pointy eggs don't roll as easily and fit alongside each other better. But look at the little owl's egg, almost perfectly round.

I've recently been looking at the makers of replica eggs and realising what an art it is. Each bird's egg is different, so two eggs from the same species could look quite distinct from each other. A good egg painter will capture the essence of the egg and in many cases they look indistinguishable from the real thing.

I shall be on the lookout for empty pieces of shell this year and seeing if I can identify them. The humblest or smallest birds can have the most beautiful egg colouring and patterning.




And at the grander end of the scale there is the magnificent golden eagle egg. A creamy buff background touched with dark gold and brown splotches, perfect camouflage for an untidy nest of sticks and heather.


Then there's the cuckoo's egg. It has a range of colour and marking and sometimes nicely matches the eggs of the birds in whose nest the egg is laid. The chick pushes out any other eggs or chicks to ensure it has the parents all to itself. I'm not sure I approve.


The egg I shall be looking for and hoping to find this year (only after it's hatched of course) is that of the song thrush.


To quote the Observer's book, "The ground colour is a beautifully clear pale greenish-blue - almost turquoise - and the markings consist of specks, spots and blotches of a very deep olive-green, black or reddish-brown."  That pale greenish-blue is one of my very favourite colours, cool, calm and serene.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

            Annie at Annie Cholewa                 Gillian at Tales from a Happy House 

           Jennifer at Thistlebear                   Sarah at Mitenska                              

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

23 comments:

  1. That's one of my favourite colours too. Great post and your Observer's book sounds brilliant. Have a Happy Easter with lots of the chocolate kind of eggs! xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. We often find Robin eggshells in the garden. It brightens my day to think they are nesting close by xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love this theme for your Colour Collaborative, those little (and not so little) jewels of the natural world. (I'll never forget walking amongst hundreds of King Penguins in Antarctica a couple of years ago, incubating their solitary white eggs, with no nests, just on their feet and covered with a flap of skin.) You and your boy might be interested in Tim Birkhead's new book, The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg, which I think is due for release in April.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for that, I shall look out for it. How wonderful to have seen King Penguins in Antarctica, must have been absolutely amazing. They really are incredible birds. We're big fans of the March of the Penguins documentary about Emperor Penguins, such an intriguing world. CJ xx

      Delete
  4. Eggs are amazing. To think that they host an embryo and then a chick is just mind boggling. And they are beautiful. Have a lovely Easter weekend. x

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's a treasure of a book to own. I hope you find a piece of song thrush egg. Lovely post. x

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for a lovely post. Beautiful and informative x

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is right up my alley! Vintage Observer books, wild bird's eggs... lovely. When I worked in a museum prior to having Joe, I used to love sneaking off down to the stores and looking through all those Victorian cabinets. The eggs and insects were my favourites. What you see in the public areas is just the tip of the iceberg - it was a magical place to spend each day.
    I hope you have a great Easter and find some of those song thrush eggs - and that you indulge in plenty of the chocolate variety too!
    S x

    ReplyDelete
  8. Such lovely colours. That blue is my favourite too, and all variations of it. I'm noticing the chicken eggs that I get from my mom are all distinct as well. Some are light brown, some are darker with tiny freckles. Others have bigger splotches of colour. It's something I marvel at every day. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh CJ, what a truly lovely post. I have a 1950's copy of the observer egg book which I've just got out to look at.

    Your blue egg is a blackbird (I'm sure you already know but just in case). I found a song thrush egg last year. You won't be disappointed when you do find one, they are beautiful things. Xx

    ReplyDelete
  10. oh such lovely things nature makes x

    ReplyDelete
  11. I loved this post, CJ. Bird eggs are beautiful, even some chicken eggs like those of the Araucanas can be bright and colourful. I would love to find a hummingbird shell in my wanderings, but have yet to come upon one. It would be smaller than a thimble from what I've read about them, so my chances of spotting one are slim. Good luck with your hunt for a song thrush egg.

    ReplyDelete
  12. What an amazing book and a great interesting post. Hope you have a lovely Easter.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Lovely post CJ. Our natural world is so beautiful. I really should take a little box with me when we go for a walk as I often see eggs on the ground and pick them up for a close study but they are so fragile they disintegrate in my pocket. The honeysuckle twining through the pear tree is a favourite nesting site for robins and blackbirds in my garden. Once a baby blackbird even fell out of the nest into the pond. I think I've made my pair of wood pigeons homeless since I've had the laurel felled. They build such poor nests, really just a platform of sticks, that their eggs would sometimes fall out and smash on the ground. I'm sure you will find a song thrush egg one day.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I really enjoyed seeing these eggs, CJ. I enjoy looking at them in museums myself and I am always just amazed at the variety in this one small aspect of biology. We have lots of doves and pigeons where I live; their eggs are not necessarily interesting to look at, but I'm always surprised at how many shells I find every spring. They're everywhere I look, and in places where I wouldn't expect birds to nest. I hope you and your family have a good Easter.

    ReplyDelete
  15. An interesting, and informative, post about a fascinating subject. Flighty xx

    ReplyDelete
  16. Having been reared on poultry farms, birds and eggs have greatly influenced my appreciation of life...its variety and color and mystery. I enjoyed your post, C.J. Thanks. xx

    ReplyDelete
  17. What an educational post, my dear! I also love bird's eggs.. and then there are chicken eggs! I selected our hens in our chicken flock that produce different colored eggs. So, I know who is producing and who is slacking. We get aqua, dark brown and light brown eggs from our girls. I'd love to see a Bald Eagle egg! ((hugs)), Teresa :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Eggs are the most amazing natural packaging aren't they. So practical, pretty and they store the contents perfectly. What could be better than that. I am so glad that people don't collect them these days, I don't like to think of eggs not having the chance to fulfil their destiny to become birds. xx

    ReplyDelete
  19. All of those egg colours are gorgeous, aren't they? So subtle and soothing, and the shapes too. It's a joy in spring to find a tiny blue eggshell in the garden, and I remember when shops sold white hen's eggs as well as brown. I never seem to see those any more. Your Observer books are things of beauty.
    Cathy x

    ReplyDelete
  20. There's something so pleasing about those eggs,lined up and labelled. The variety in shape and colour is quite remarkable. We found an abandoned nest in a bush in the garden - sadly no egg fragments though. Xx

    ReplyDelete
  21. I remember as a child enjoying my ladybird books that had pictures of the birds and their colourful eggs. It is just as well that birds eggs are no longer collected but a shame that the museums don't bring the eggs out of storage for us to admire. Sarah x

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hey CJ,
    e have a privet hedge at the front of our house, and the Hedge Sparrows nest there every year. At the back end of last summer, Olly and I found a discarded egg shell, that must have come from one of the little nests inside the hedge. I still have it. It is the most beautiful shade of palest blue. It is perfect.
    Leanne xx

    ReplyDelete