It takes a particular kind of focus to head out in temperatures as low as -60°C – cold enough to make a man’s chattering teeth crack – on a gruelling 70-miles trek in search of some eggs.

But in 1911, in the bitter blast of the austral winter, three daring men did precisely that, setting off in horrendous conditions of almost permanent darkness on what would eventually be chronicled as part of ‘the worst journey in the world’.

The men from Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, believed emperor penguins’ embryos held the key to revealing how birds and reptiles evolved.

The nest and egg of the extinct Laysan Rail is the only example known to existThe nest and egg of the extinct Laysan Rail is the only example known to exist (Image: Natural History Museum)

And Apsley George Benet Cherry, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers were prepared to risk life and limb – and their broken teeth - to embark on the astonishing journey, hauling their sledges 60 miles across frozen Antarctic landscape with a laser-like focus on retrieving their prize.

The three eggs they eventually collected after a journey that saw them contend with frostbite and frozen sledges  - a problem that added miles to their journey - are among a staggering collection that falls under the remit of Douglas G D Russell, the Edinburgh-born senior curator of birds’ eggs and nests at the Natural History Museum’s base in Tring, Hertfordshire.

Delicate and devoid of their embryos – which, despite the trio’s remarkable trek, did not provide the missing link they hoped – they tell an incredible story of the extreme lengths collectors would go to retrieve specimens prized for their potential to unlock understanding of the natural world, for their beauty, their rarity and their curiosity.

One of the Emperor penguin eggs retrieved by 1911 Antarctic expedition team members One of the Emperor penguin eggs retrieved by 1911 Antarctic expedition team members (Image: Natural History Museum)

The eggs and the remarkable ‘to the ends of the earth’ story behind their collection – documented by Cherry-Garrard in The Worst Journey in the World - feature in an absorbing new book compiled by Douglas, which shines light on some of the vast collection’s treasures.

Intended as a snapshot of a massive egg and nest collection that spans 52% of the world’s birds’ species, it includes examples taken from the 300,000 or so clutches of eggs and some 5,000 nests in its care.

Far more than ‘just’ a collection of specimens, the museum’s eggs and nests tell multi-layered stories of the characters who devoted their lives to collecting them, their epic journeys to find them – sometimes paying with their lives – and of the fragile winged creatures that made them.

Far from ‘bird-brained’, as the book’s selection of crystal-clear images shows the nests are minor miracles of engineering and architecture. Made using meagre materials, occasionally found in the most obscure places and, a sign of how long humans have been leaving their trash behind them, sometimes even the oldest nests are stuffed with remnants of manmade materials.

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The book also explores how modern technology – the kind that would have blown the minds of the three Antarctic explorers more than a century ago – is now helping to unlock precious detail contained within some of the nests.

With science making new breakthroughs all the time, there’s potential for nests built more than two centuries ago to provide priceless detail of the climate at the time, changing feeding habits and the tiny bugs and beasts the birds shared their space with.

The nest of the Norfolk starling, which was hunted to extinction in the 1920sThe nest of the Norfolk starling, which was hunted to extinction in the 1920s (Image: Natural History Museum)

“With nests, you are looking at a record of behaviour,” Douglas adds. “They are particularly important because a nest is a small time capsule of the habitat that surrounded the bird at that moment in time.”

Faced with hundreds of specimens to choose from, with the oldest nest in the collection dating to 1768 and some made by birds long since extinct, Douglas had to choose which ones to select for the Natural History Museum book, Interesting Bird Nests & Eggs.

He began by picking a single species to represent every one of the 120 bird families for which the museum held a nest and eggs, and whittling down to identify particularly interesting examples.

It wasn’t necessarily the rarest or most unusual nests that made the cut. Sometimes, as in the case of the nest of the Echo Parakeet, the nest can look like a pile of garden bark but tell a remarkable story of survival.

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Collected from the montane forests of Mauritius in 1986 when there were just ten pairs left, the nest – stuffed in a plastic tub – represents  the beginning of a dedicated monitoring and study of nest sites leading to a successful captive breeding programme.

As a result, the birds are now flourishing.

Some nests featured in the book tell of remarkable detective work to unravel the stories behind them.

The earliest surviving example of a village weaver nest, tracked down to the exact day and place from which it was retrievedThe earliest surviving example of a village weaver nest, tracked down to the exact day and place from which it was retrieved (Image: Natural History Museum)

“A classic example is the village weaver nest,” adds Douglas, whose interest in the natural world was ignited as a child spending hours at the Royal Museum of Edinburgh in the city’s Chambers Street.

“It took us two years to work out exactly what its history was.

“And we are now pretty confident we know the day it was collected, the place it was collected and who collected it.”

Working with a colleague who focused on specimen’s biology, Douglas poured through old publications and journals to pinpoint the nest to the Niger Expedition of 1841.

He found notes made by expedition botanist Jules Vogel made passing reference to pausing to look at the species near Cape Coast Castle, Ghana – an entry linking the collection’s nest to the very day it was collected.  

More poignantly, while the nest made the journey to London to be added to a collection held by the Director of Kew Gardens, Vogel died before the expedition was over.

Selection of host nests, occupied by cuckoos. Once their egg hatches, the young cuckoo pushes rival young birds from the nest Selection of host nests, occupied by cuckoos. Once their egg hatches, the young cuckoo pushes rival young birds from the nest (Image: Natural History Museum)

Douglas began working with the collection 23 years ago.

He agrees that among the most poignant specimens are those relating to extinct birds, such as the great auk egg. Britain’s last great auk was slaughtered in 1840 by a fisherman who saw it resting on a rock near the St Kilda archipelago.

The nest of the greater bird of paradise, a remarkable interwoven spiral of thin branches and leaves, tells a story of consumerism and fashion: it was collected in the mid-1920s by which time the feather trade had already existed for around 500 years.

A Greater bird-of-paradise egg found in the 1920s, by which time the fashion craze for bird feathers had already spanned centuries (Image: Natural History Museum)

While the species survives, the nest of the Norfolk starling highlights how easily some can be lost.

Resembling a delicate bouquet of twigs and grasses, the birds, found only on Norfolk Island off the east coast of Australia, were vigorously hunted to extinction 100 years ago.

Douglas dedicated the book to the “diligent, often dangerous work of the thousands of curators, naturalists, explorers and ornithologists who, over the course of several centuries have brought back the collections which underpin much of our knowledge of birds”.

And he concludes by highlighting the human impact on the nests birds build: from pieces of string found in reed warbler nests dating from 1783, to birds today which incorporate cigarette butts into their nests, and even build in bins and, the case of a sparrow’s nest contained in the collection, in the exhaust pipe of a war zone army vehicle.

Layers of twigs and soft grasses make up the beautifully constructed nest of the bokmakierie, an African bush shrike Layers of twigs and soft grasses make up the beautifully constructed nest of the bokmakierie, an African bush shrike (Image: Natural History Museum)

“Two centuries later our interest in nests continues to grow, energised by field studies supported by laboratory investigations,” he adds.

“We are in a transition period as climate change, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, pollution and deforestation are relentlessly driven by unsustainable human behaviour.

“If nests are, as research has suggested, a cultural tradition in which the choice of nest materials is learned as well as innate, what will the nests of tomorrow be constructed from if we do not curb our enthusiasm for throwaway culture?”  

Interesting Birds & Nests by Douglas GD Russell costs £12.99 and is available from the Natural History Museum https://www.nhmshop.co.uk/interesting-bird-nests-eggs.html