Mark E. Hauber - The Book of Eggs: A Lifesize Guide to the Eggs of Six Hundred of the World’s Bird Species

MARK E. HAUBER

THE BOOK OF EGGS

A LIFE SIZE GUIDE TO THE EGGS
OF SIX HUNDRED OF
THE WORLDS BIRD SPECIES

EDITORS

JOHN BATES & BARBARA BECKER

PHOTOGRAPHY

JOHN WEINSTEIN

MARK E. HAUBER is professor in the animal behavior and conservation program, and editor of the journals Ethology and The Auk: Ornithological Advances, based at the Department of Psychology at Hunter College and the Graduate Centet of the City University of New York.

JOHN BATES is associate curator of birds at the Field Museum in Chicago, and BARBARA BECKER , a former member of the museums team, is now an independent consultant.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

Ivy Press

210 High Street, Lewes

East Sussex BN7 2NS

United Kingdom

www.ivypress.co.uk

Copyright 2014 The Ivy Press Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Print ISBN: 978-1-78240-047-9

ePub ISBN: 978-1-78240-138-4

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-78240-137-7

Distributed worldwide (except North America) by Thames & Hudson Ltd., 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX, United Kingdom

JACKET AND LITHOCASE IMAGES John Weinstein

Color origination by Ivy Press Reprographics

This book was conceived, designed, and produced by

Ivy Press

210 High Street, Lewes

East Sussex BN7 2NS

United Kingdom

www.ivypress.co.uk

Creative Director PETER BRIDGEWATER

Publisher JASON HOOK

Art Director MICHAEL WHITEHEAD

Editorial Director CAROLINE EARLE

Senior Editor STEPHANIE EVANS

Commissioning Editor KATE SHANAHAN

Designer GLYN BRIDGEWATER

Commissioned Photographs JOHN WEINSTEIN

Illustrators IVAN HISSEY, ADAM HOOK, CORAL MULA

Artwork RICHARD PETERS

Typeset in Fournier and News Gothic

From the brilliantly green and glossy eggs of the Elegant Crested Tinamousaid to be among the most beautiful in the worldto the small beige and speckled eggs of the House Sparrow that makes its nest in a lamppost and the uniformly brown, white, or even blue chickens eggs found by the dozen in any corner grocery, birds eggs have inspired countless biologists and ornithologists, as well as artists, from John James Audubon to the contemporary photographer Rosamond Purcell. For scientists, these vibrant vessels are the source of an array of interesting topics, from the factors responsible for egg coloration to the curious practice of brood parasitism, in which the eggs of many parasitic birds mimic those of other bird species in order to be cunningly concealed among the clutches of unsuspecting foster parents.

The Book of Eggs introduces readers to eggs from six hundred bird speciessome endangered or extinctfrom around the world and housed mostly at Chicagos Field Museum. Organized by habitat and taxonomy, the entries include newly commissioned photographs that reproduce each egg in full color and at actual size, as well as distribution maps and drawings and descriptions of the birds.

Male ostrich tending eggs in the Serengeti, Tanzania. The beige eggshells protect the embryos from sun damage and the thickness of the shell protects the embryos from the weight of the parent.

When one thinks of the beauty, function, and fragility that have evolved in the natural world, bird eggs have to hold a place at the top of the list. Birds are all around us, every single individual hatched from an egg laid by a parent bird who then warmed them so the chick could successfully develop. Eggs are a key component of bird reproduction, which has allowed birds to flourish and diversify around the planet.

The egg of the domestic chicken is not only a major source of human nutrition but also a resource for vaccine researchers.

The eggs of one species, the domestic chicken, also typify nature that we, almost unconsciously, come into contact with on a daily basis: we scramble them, poach them and color them for holidays, without much thought to the fact that this is essentially modified predation. Beyond a source of nutrition, bird eggs and their components have provided building materials for cosmetics and other chemical industries. Microbiologists working to develop new vaccines grow many bacteria and viruses by piercing through chicken eggshells to inoculate the otherwise sterile interiors. Clearly, bird eggs deserve all the attention that this book can offer!

Throughout this book, you will be introduced to basic breeding behaviors of birds and the myriad of ways in which evolution has changed, augmented, and enhanced the basic process of laying and caring for eggs. Eggs may have rigid structural limits, but simply flipping through these pages reveals that there has been a wide range of exceedingly successful experimentation in bird egg evolution in the form of size, shape, and coloration.

EGGS IN MUSEUMS

As we celebrate the eggs of birds and their diversity, from albatrosses and anhingas to wood ducks and Zebra Finches, we also celebrate the irreplaceable value of collections of eggs like those from which these magnificently detailed photographs were taken. The collections represented here are housed at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, California. The Field Museum collection contains 23,000 sets of eggs from over 1,600 species, the result of the diligent efforts of the collectors who, largely between 1890 and 1930, found each nest, carefully prepared each egg, and recorded valuable natural history data.

Australasian Gannets breeding at a colony of 1,500 pairs at Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand; many seabird species form colonies to lay eggs in the safety of dense neighborhoods.

This collection made it possible to create this book, but it also reminds us of the scientific responsibility we have to understand bird biology. Throughout the text you will learn that we still do not know basic aspects about the breeding biology of many species of birds, even common ones. We hope this recognition leads people of all kinds into the field for more study, because ultimately it will be our scientific understanding that will allow us to effectively monitor and conserve birds living in a world that is increasingly influenced by human activities.