In this compelling new essay, Tim Birkhead—world-renowned British ornithologist, author, and educator—features the near-threatened Piping plover as a case study in egg architecture.

Why are Piping plover eggs pyriform or pear-shaped, in contrast to rounder chicken eggs? Why are plover eggs among the largest, relative to parent size, in birds? What causes aberrations in egg size and shape among plovers and other birds?

With charm and clarity, Birkhead answers these questions, while opening the door to still-unknown scientific mysteries related to eggs—objects that many biologists believe to be as close to the perfect outcomes of natural selection as any found in the natural world.

Featuring beautiful cover art by Windsor-based illustrator Julia Hall, only 200 of these hand-bound, limited-edition chapbooks have been produced.

Praise for Tim Birkhead

"[Tim Birkhead’s writing is] magnificent."
—Sir David Attenborough

“Birkhead’s approach to writing about science is refined and engaging ... He has a knack for finding the oddities and the wonders that make the natural world so endlessly fascinating.”
—The Guardian

"Birkhead excels as a communicator of science; his style is as accessible as it is informative, and his personality is evident on every page."
—Jon Carter, for the British Trust for Ornithology

"There's something endlessly pleasurable in listening to a person talk about a subject on which they're both an enthusiast and an authority ... Its a joy to come across some nerdish enthusiasm."
—The Daily Telegraph, on The Great Auk

About the Author

A leading expert on ornithology and evolutionary biology, Tim Birkhead is emeritus Professor of Behavioural Ecology at Sheffield University and a Fellow of the Royal Society in the UK, founded in 1660 and the oldest continuously existing national scientific academy. His awards for science, teaching, and outreach are legion, including the Elliot Coues Medal for outstanding contributions to ornithological research, the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour medal, and the Evolution Society’s Stephen Jay Gould Award. Tim is author of more than a dozen books, including The Wisdom of Birds,Bird Sense, The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird's Egg, and his latest, The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife, a book inspired in part by Tim’s fifty-year long study of guillemots on Skomer, an island off southeast Wales. Sir David Attenborough has described Birkhead’s writing as “magnificent.”