Review: Egg & Nest

Egg & Nest
Rosamond Purcell, Linnea S. Hall, Rene Corado
Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), 2008

Ed Harrison looked, at first glance, more like a guy you would hire to do your taxes than a person who scaled cliffs, climbed trees, and fended off lions. But Ed was born into that clan of passionate amateurs, whose essential nature found its expression in time afield, collecting, observing, and recording observations. Ed followed his star at considerable expense and personal risk. His legacy is housed at the Western Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, CA.

The first time I visited Ed in his office in Westwood, Los Angeles, I assumed that the eggs, nests, and art that festooned the place accounted for the sum of his collecting efforts. What seemed like an impressive collection was but a modest sample. On a subsequent visit to his home Ed led me to his back yard where he had erected a building which he christened “The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology” – a private museum to house the fruits of Ed’s expeditions, and the orphaned collections which he acquired from widows of fellow collectors and from museums from all over the world. The building was so packed with eggs, bird skins, mounts, nests, paintings, and compact storage cases to hold what couldn’t be displayed, that there was hardly room for a person. It was a jaw-dropping sight. Eggs and nests were carefully stored with original field notes about species, the place and date of collection, and whatever else the collector thought might be interesting to future observers. Ed created the museum and hired a talented PhD ornithologist, Lloyd Kiff, as curator, mostly at his own expense. After Ed’s death in 2002, the museum moved to its current home in Camarillo, CA. My lasting impression of that first visit (and of each subsequent visit) was an impression of wonder.

We are now privileged to have a documentary record of Ed’s cabinet of ornithological wonders in Egg & Nest, a beautiful volume which celebrates Ed Harrison’s life, his contribution to ornithology, and the unique collection of collections housed at the Western Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The stunning photographs alone make the case for purchasing Egg & Nest. Rosamond Purcell’s photographs of selected items in the collection are luminous. They include images of the heads of three Aplomado Falcon chicks left in a nest – the remains of some unknown predator --, nine clutches of Red-winged Blackbird eggs showing remarkable diversity in color and pattern, nests built in discarded coffee cans and electric pole insulators, skins and mounts of all sorts.

Egg & Nest also includes well-written text by Linnea S. Hall, Executive Director, and Rene Corado, Collections Manager of the Western Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The text tells the story of Ed Harrison and the collections he assembled in the context of the history of egg collecting and explains the whys and hows of collecting. The photos are captioned with the provenance of the specimen and the biology, conservation, and ecology of the subject birds. The book opens with the following anecdote:

In 1953 Ed Harrison and Bill Pemberton were collecting birds’ eggs in Kenya, Africa. According to Ed, on September 22 they located a large clutch of twenty-two Ostrich eggs laid by different females in a single nest. Ed and Bill chose to collect the entire clutch, and while Ed settled in to blow the eggs, Bill left to look for other bird specimens – taking the only gun. Soon after, several lions surrounded Ed. He recalled that his first thought at the time was, “Holy *$%! These lions are going to eat me! But instead of doing something to save himself, he started to blow out the contents of the eggs as fast as he could. He reasoned that even if he was eaten, at least the eggs would be properly prepared for shipment back to the United States. Luckily, about that time Bill came back to check on Ed and helped scare off the lions. The eggs were successfully blown, packed, and shipped back to the United States.

Aside from an ability to keep one’s cool in the face of being eaten, an egg collector must be a good naturalist. Collecting eggs and nests requires patience and keen powers of observation since birds invest considerable effort in keeping their nests hidden. The collections he amassed is testimony to the fact that Ed Harrison had all of these traits and to his seriousness as a scientist. The museum he created and this wonderful volume are paeans to a life well-lived. Egg & Nest makes this remarkable life work available to the rest of us.

To any reader who is tempted to scold this writer for so lavishly praising an activity as immoral as egg collecting, I hasten to point out that large, historical collections of eggs and nests have much to teach us about the breeding biology of birds. Egg and nest collections have been and continue to be important to conservation. It was eggs from private collections which provided the data which established that DDT disrupted raptor breeding by causing the thinning of their egg shells. Such collections are also beautiful. They inspire the wonder and curiosity which is at the core of every committed conservationist.

Egg and Nest is a stunning tribute to a remarkable man’s passion for birds and nature, and to his legacy. It is also a work of art in its own right.  If you love birds you will have a hard time putting this one down.

Wayne Mones,
November, 2008