EGGS
All female birds lay eggs. The young grow inside the eggs, which are kept warm by their parents. To hatch, they must chip their way through the eggshell. Some chicks, such as ducklings, can run and walk around soon after hatching, but other baby birds hatch at a much earlier stage in their development when they are naked, blind, and almost helpless.
- GREAT AUK This beautiful egg is one of the last relics of a big flightless seabird that once lived in the north Atlantic and hunted fish like a penguin. Each pair laid just one egg, and the last known pair was killed in 1844.
- GOLDEN EAGLE A female golden eagle lays two eggs a few days apart. She keeps the first egg warm so it hatches earlier. This chick may be the only one to survive if food is hard to find.
- KING PENGUIN King Penguins breed in huge colonies on windswept rocky islands around Antarctica. Each female lays one egg and both parents take turns keeping it warm by supporting it on their feet beneath their warm bellies.
- OSTRICH The ostrich is the world’s largest bird, and it lays the biggest eggs. Each one can weigh anything up to 1.9 kg (4 lbs) — the same weight as 27 chicken’s eggs.
- QUAIL The quail lays a huge clutch of up to 18 eggs in a nest on the ground. Like many eggs, they have camouflage markings that make them harder to see. The female starts keeping them warm only after she lays the last one. This means they start developing at the same time, so they all hatch at once. The chicks are active as soon as they hatch, just like ostriches.
- SPARROWHAWK In the 1960s, sparrowhawks suffered from poisoning by pesticides used in farming. The poisons thinned their eggshells, so they broke when the birds tried to keep them warm. Most of these pesticides are now banned.
- CUCKOO Cuckoos lay single eggs in the nests of other birds, and their colour varies to match the host bird’s eggs. When the cuckoo hatches, it heaves the other eggs out so it can eat all the food its foster parents collect.
- KIWI A kiwi is 20 times smaller than an emu, yet its eggs are almost the same size. This means that the egg is huge compared to the kiwi that lays it, at up to a quarter of her weight. That’s like a human mother giving birth to a three-year-old child.
- COMMON SANDPIPER Sandpipers are shorebirds that lay their eggs in shallow scrapes on the ground near the water. Their pointed shape allows them to be pushed together in a tight clutch to take up less space. The eggs are camouflaged by speckled patterns, and can be hard to see — but if you do find any birds’ eggs, remember it is illegal to collect or disturb them.
- HUMMINGBIRD Hummingbirds lay the smallest of all birds’ eggs. The bee hummingbird’s egg is the size of a pea, because the bird itself is no bigger than a large moth. This ruby-throated hummingbird’s egg is bigger, but still tiny compared to the ostrich egg.
- CHICKEN The egg that everybody recognizes is laid by the domestic chicken. We eat 1.1 trillion of these eggs every year.
Picture Credit : Google
