In superb feather: a museum assortment of birds’ eggs and nests – in footage

The preservation of egg shells and nests for examine and show has been occurring for greater than 350 years, and London’s Pure Historical past Museum has one of the vital complete collections. Douglas Russell , an NHM senior curator and writer of the forthcoming guide Attention-grabbing Fowl Nests and Eggs , explains: “Whereas I generally selected acquainted species, just like the blue tit, I usually highlighted lesser-known examples, corresponding to a buff-spotted woodpecker nest inbuilt a termite mound, collected in Cameroon within the early 1900s .” Maybe essentially the most shocking, he says, is a home sparrow nest constructed within the exhaust of a RAF helicopter initially of the second Gulf warfare. “Nests are great time capsules of the habitat the birds have been residing in at that second.”