Happy Easter

17 Replies to “Happy Easter”

1. I remember as a youngster often going to Gloucester on a Saturday shopping with my mother and being allowed to visit the Natural History Museum in Westgate Street before getting back on the bus. The main reason was to have a look at the egg collection and I can agree with you about a certain attraction. As a youngster, like others I had half a dozen eggs in a shoebox but thank goodness I moved on to the wider bird interest.

   Little did I realise I would re-visit that egg collection many years later (in the 90s) in a professional capacity. During that time I met a few egg collectors and found them well informed and interesting people to talk to (I am sure there are others out there that aren’t). They struck me as living in the past without understanding society had moved on. I am sure egg collecting will eventually disappear but it does seem to be taking a long time to do so.

   1. Bob – thanks for that.

2. Being from a generation well before yours Mark, I did collect a few birds eggs! There seemed to be so many nests and I rememeber how exquisite the eggs were, beautiful blue Song thrush’s, exquisitely marked Yellowhammers (we called them scribbling larks because of the markings on the egg). But I soon realised it was A WRONG THING and gave up! One reason being on reaching up to a nest above eye level to see if there were any eggs I disturbed a weasel that had beaten me to it, it ran down my arm! I doubt that I would be a subject for any “academic study”.
   Happy Easter.

   1. Richard – nice story. Happy Easter!

3. Dearly Beloved is ovophobic and can’t stand even to look at eggs – so my future breakfasts have to be boxed in the fridge. While I was having my lightly boiled and dippy toast this morning she went down to the viewpoint to listen to the Cathedral bells – a bit pointless I told her in the East wind, and with all our clocks being wrong for some reason – and returned to report silent bells but Skylarks singing in the sunshine. Now I find the clock in the jamjar has started working properly again after going wrong in October – so all is set for a happy day pruning and watching tits fight over suet and the squirrel sliding down the bird-feeder pole what I have coated with spray-on grease from Halfords. Most amusing.

   1. Spray on grease? An oil based product, tha’ll be could for your lawn. Try heating up some lard and whilst still warm/liquid-y coating the pole and when it freezes stops squirrels.

      1. Cold finger tips at Brands Hatch this morning, that should’ve been “that’ll be good for your lawn.

         1. Lawn? Most amusing 🙂
            I have melted lard and mixed seed into it for homebrewed coconut feeders, but found it was a bit messy for my Alan Titchmarsh Ratchet Loppers, which work much better if they are lubricated, especially the slidy bit which clicks. Also, you can’t have too many Halford spray-on products, like grease, penetrating oil, WD40, elecatric contact cleaner, because they all have the little tiny red tube for accurate application which is easily lost and the more you have the more likely you can find another one under the “lawn”mower.

4. I too was an egg collector in my early years. A few minutes walk took us into a countryside of fields, woods, hedges and ditches. Farming was at a more gentle pace, not the agri-industry of the “modern” times. We had a rule that only one or two eggs were taken from nests of large clutches. We learnt the different types of birds, where to find their nests, how to identify eggs etc. I only had a small egg collection, which I donated to the local museum. I stopped collecting at about the age of ten. That,s when I grew up. Most of the local habitat has been destroyed for houses and giant sheds. If I want to hear skylark, curlew, partridge, corn bunting, yellowhammer etc. it now takes a car journey to find a suitable habitat. Progress?

5. My father showed me birds nests when I was young and he would take out an egg to show me and then replace it, I remember chaffinch, hedge sparrow and blackbird.

   He also told me how , when he was young (c1920) he collected moorhens eggs ( by the River Nene at Woodford) to put into the Yorkshire Pudding. Only one or two eggs were taken from any nest and he said that every year, he and his brothers could always continue to find plenty of moorhen’s nests.

6. There are many things that annoy me about egg collectors, the biggest being the threat they pose to rare breding birds and their nesting sites but there is also a couple of odd quirks that also equally annoy and frustrate me
   1) when people seem to put a “genreation” tilt to the debate and saying how egg collecting will die out as the older eggers die off are just simply not as agile anymore. It seems from various sources of media there appears to a few 30-40 year olds being caught and prosecuted, I myself found teenagers raiding a Little Owl though they were after the youngsters rather than the eggs
   2) the sentencing (or lack of) and puny fines handed out. Then when they come out no monitoring, ok they are monitored but how many times have those been monitored have gone out and re-offended and been caught, so not effective monitoring. I read one story about a man who had been taught “survivalist” training and spent the entire breeding season in woodlands and being totally self sufficent, an area where he had been banned from, unoticed until it was too late, which makes me wonder (you also touched on the point Mark) these collectors have seriously good fieldcraft and are obviously good bird watchers, now perhaps it would be good for organisations such as the RSPB to get involve in a different way other then just prosecuting, I have read that some of these collectors have a form of OCD so simply put until they receive treatment (if there is such a thing) they’re going to carry on. For example could the RSPB not utilise the skill these collectors have in protecting nest sites, monitoring sensitive nest sites…would the bloke (if he could be trusted) that was trained in survival techniques be a perfect candidate for protecting a Hen Harrier nest site? If these collectors were allocated a site to protect at least money would be saved from having to track them down in the first place and also be monitored at the same time, there could also be a pay of for the collector, after all not all eggs will hatch, so after the breeding season has finished if there are any eggs un-hatched the person gets to keep them…..silly idea I suppose?

7. Well Ithink they are as close to being evil as those who poison ans shoot B O P.They are only interested in rare birds eggs and of course every egg is potentially a rare bird.If they were interested in just the craft of finding a nest then if they looked for nests belonging to common birds and just took one egg I think the damage would be almost nil as the adult birds would have say 4 or 5 chicks to feed instead of 5 or 6 and maybe even though less chicks they may well survive in certain instances instead of perhaps 2 or 3 runts perishing.For certain right the way through the first half of 20th century and quite likely well before that there was a routine by country dwellers to take a Moorhens egg from any nest found and it certainly did not seem to mean a shortage of Moorhens.

8. I think Douglas is right when he suggests that most egg collectors have a form of OCD. If it wasn’t eggs it would be stamp collecting, twitching or trainspotting or some other hobby that attracts obsessional types. Anglers are also prone to these obsessive tendancies, I know of one chap who became so obsessed with catching a 3lb roach that it cost him his marriage, home, job and a number of friendships. He caught his prize in the end and believe he’s never been fishing since.

   I wonder how many of the older readers of this blog have collected plovers eggs in the past ? I’ve heard so many farmers of a certain generation wax lyrical about how good they tasted, although obviously none of them would dream of taking them the days.

   1. I do have an egg-related behavioural disorder. When I take eggs out of a carton I have to leave a symmetrical pattern of eggs in the box. This means I always have to eat at least two. I was worried about this and mentioned it to Dr G and she said it was almost certainly a manifestation of OCD. Which was a great relief because I was very worried that I was going down with Feng Shui.

      1. Filbert – your comments do make me smile. Please keep them coming.

      2. I’m tempted to become a Feng Shui Consultant when I retire one day. I understand this mainly involves visiting the homes of couples with names like Tristan and Jocasta; walking around with a compass, checking for geopathic stress (whatever that is), randomly rearranging the furniture, imparting some derisory comments about their choice of colour scheme before then presenting them with a bill for several hundred pounds.

         I understand that the presenting of the bill is the hard part, as a dead pan expression and full eye contact must be maintained at all times. Upon trousering full payment, one then arranges to revisit them in the near future with a view to flogging them some overpriced wind-chimes. Obviously there is more demand for these services in the soft south than in the frozen north.

         1. joe w – yes, down here we are all Feng Shui’d up to our necks. Good luck in that new role.

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