Denny Historical Egg Collection

About:

The Museum contains a historical collection of blown eggs from UK and European species most of which were collected between 1755-1930. The exact origins of the collection are unknown, as with many of our specimens, due to the destruction of records in the WWII bombing of Sheffield. Species are mostly common British birds from the Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita to the Pied Wagtail Motacilla alba.

The collection expanded in 2016 with a donation of Phillip Gordon's (1962-2010) dated egg collection (approx. 150 eggs) by his sister. These eggs were mostly purchased between 1910-1920s from a variety of sources including egg dealers, and a full record of collection dates was provided alongside the donation. The museum gained another addition to the historic collection in 2021 when it was bequeathed twelve trays of eggs from Captain Vivian Hewitt's (1888–1965) collection.

In addition to the historic collection, we also hold Professor Tim Birkhead's research collection built from fieldwork on Skomer Island, Wales between collected under licence 2013-2018 from Natural Resource Wales and with permission from The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

A domestic chicken egg next to a model egg of the elephant bird - an extinct giant flightless bird from the Pleistocene

Tribute to Phillip Gordon:

(Written by his sister Glynis Rose) 

Phillip Rowland Gordon was born in Leicester on the 3rd May 1962. His parents had been missionaries in the Belgian Congo and returned to live in England. He was the youngest of 5 children.

Phillip’s interest in the great outdoors and wildlife began at a very early age. He spent his childhood wandering and exploring the fields and hedgerows that surrounded his home, climbing trees, making dens and fishing for tadpoles and newts in the nearby ponds. 

His father was an avid reader and keen naturalist and ornithologist. He became his teacher and mentor and during the years it took for Phillip to grow from a small boy to a young man they spent many hours roaming and rambling the Scottish, Welsh and English countryside together. At the age of eighteen Phillip went travelling around Australia and New Zealand. 

New Zealand became his second home and in the years to come he returned there on a number of occasions, sometimes for six months at a time. 

To go out for a walk with Phillip was an education in itself. He knew every bird call and the habitat of numerous species. His keen eyesight and hearing never missed an opportunity. He’d delve into crevices in stone walls, climb over boulders and up trees in a flash at the sight of a small reptile or mammal. His observations were outstanding. 

Phillip was an active supporter of the Leicester Wildlife Trust and spent a great deal of his leisure time involved in voluntary work and recruiting new members for the Trust. He was also a councillor for the Green Party for Leicester County Council. 

Phillip was a man who followed his passion for wildlife and its conservation right up until his untimely death in 2010. 

He would have been very happy to see this collection displayed here at the Museum. 


Hewitt egg collection:

In 2021, the Alfred Denny Museum was bequeathed twelve trays of eggs which formed part of Captain Vivian Hewitt’s vast collection. The eggs were originally collected in the late 1800s and early 1900s, predominantly by two notable ornithologists, F. Jourdain and J. Goodall. The collection contains great historical and biological value because, unusually, it contains precise details of the location and collection date of all the eggs. 

Egg collections are sometimes considered worthless, but their role in identifying the effects of DDT (an agricultural insecticide), acid rain and disease organisms on the health and structure of bird eggs demonstrates their long-term value.

The Museum sought funds from the British Birds Charitable Trust (BBCT) to acquire a bespoke egg cabinet to securely store the egg trays. A £3000 grant was approved by the BBCT in 2022 and the cabinet has now been installed in the Museum. 

It is built in the style of a traditional Victorian museum cabinet, with hardwood exterior, and internal shelves that are spaced at custom distances to accommodate the differently sized historical egg boxes. 

We are sincerely grateful to the BBCT for awarding us this grant which has ensured the secure and appropriate housing for a significant part of Captain Vivian Hewitt’s historical egg collection.

Skomer Island Fieldwork

Professor Tim Birkhead has studied Common Guillemots, Uria aalge, on Skomer island for most of his career, observing their behaviour, ecology including the significance of the guillemot’s unusual pyriform (pear shaped) egg.

During his research on the adaptive significance of the guillemot’s egg shape Birkhead built up a research collection of Guillemot and Razorbill (Alca torda) eggs that are now house held in the Alfred Denny Museum.

That research, conducted in collaboration with Dr Jamie Thompson (then Tim’s research assistant), Dr Nicola Hemming's (then post-doc at Sheffield), and Professor Bob Montgomerie (a colleague at Queens’ University, Ontario Canada) resulted in a number ground-breaking studies on the biology of birds’ eggs

Publications: 

Guillemot eggs with their unique "pyriform" egg shape
Close up of egg with date written above egg blow hole

Curatorial efforts:

Between 2016-2017 the museum underwent refurbishments thanks to the University Heritage Officer at the time, Dr Lynn Fox, and Tim Birkhead. The 1970s under-bench units housing the historic egg collection were replaced with new cabinets. These eggs were mostly unlabelled and entirely uncatalogued, so in 2017 the collection was transferred to new glass-topped cabinets and stored in museum boxes with acid free card and plastazote foam sheets. As specimens were moved they were photographed and databased. The egg-move was organised and conducted by a final year APS undergraduate Eloise Wingrove who was funded by an On-CampUS Placement. 

When Phillip Gordon's eggs were added to the collection they too were photographed in their original boxes with their labels. The padding was removed and replaced with acid free fibre and the eggs and labels replaced as closely as possible as in the original arrangement. 

PhD student, Katherine Assersohn, has been working on carefully photographing and databasing each tray of eggs in the Hewitt collection. To ensure security of the eggs some of the old padding in the trays will be replaced with acid free cotton padding to prevent eggs rolling within their boxes. 

1954 Protection of Birds Act:

This bill was introduced with the aim to protect birds, their nests and their eggs all the year round, with exceptions made for game and food birds. 

Before this egg collecting (also known as 'birdnesting' or oology) had been common, and thousands of eggs were kept in public and private collections. In the 19th and early 20th century the collection of wild bird eggs was considered a respectable scientific pursuit, with dedicated collectors embarking on often risky expeditions across the world. 

Some collectors would go to great lengths to collect the eggs of birds, from scaling steep cliffs like the climbers ('egg-climmers') of Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, to the extreme case of Charles Bendire (1836-1897) who was willing to have his teeth broken to remove an egg stuck in his mouth which he'd placed for safe keeping when climbing down from a tree. 

By the early 1900s, conservation organisations started making connections between declining bird numbers and egg collecting, and by the 1920s there was a growing backlash against birdnesting, spearheaded by the RSPB who had denounced the practice. 

In 1954 the Protection of Birds Act made it illegal to (a) kill, injure or take, any wild bird; or (b) take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use; or (c) take of destroy an egg of any wild bird.