A Fragile Beauty

On Easter Monday,we found an egg. It was partially hidden in the grass in our front yard. It was a real Easter egg, not hidden by humans. A robin's egg. How beautiful, small, and fragile. Little Ella was enchanted with it, and once I found out it had been on the ground a few days, we felt we could crack it open without harming anything. For more than a hundred years, scientists and birders have wondered why bird eggs are speckled. It was thought that the speckles on eggs were camoflauge, to hide them. But speckling patterns did not do a good job of blending in. Then a few years ago, scientists discovered a new purpose for the speckling. The speckles are always in spots where the shell is much thinner. It is thought that the pigment in the spots acts rather like a glue, strengthening and supporting the thin areas, protecting them from breakage. Who knew? The smallest egg is fom a hummingbird, the largest from an ostrich. I have read that it takes two hours to hard boil an ostrich egg. Oy, the cholesterol!

"The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, but they cannot compare with the pinions and feathers of the stork. She lays her eggs in the ground and lets them warm in the sand, unmindful that a foot may crush them, that some wild animal may trample them. She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers; she cares not that her labor was in vain, for God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of good sense." job 39:13,17