Monday, January 11, 2010

Great Eggspectations


   For a little learning activity for my daughter and a little recreational painting time for me, I began this quick project of painting some wooden eggs from A.C. Moore to look like native wild bird eggs from New England. I was inspired by some images in a book that was illustrated by a local artist named Helen Stevens (go to her website here ). The book, titled Moose Eggs: Or Why Moose Have Flat Antlers is written by accomplished fabulist Susan Willams Beckhorn. 

To paint the eggs, I studied some of the images of eggs they had on the inside of the cover, and then I spent many hours trying to find some clear images of specific ova on the web. By the time I was done, I had almost convinced myself to start a blog on the identification of wild bird eggs. That said, here is as close as I will get (taking into account some slightly shoddy painting by a distracted Stay at Home Mom) :


  1.  Osprey
  2.  Robin
  3.  Northern Cardinal
  4.  Rose Breasted Grosbeak
  5.  Blue Jay
  6.  Cormorant
  7.  Song Thrush (not from New England, more like England....but I loved the colors)\
  8.  Great Horned Owl
  9.  Puffin
  10.  House Sparrow
  11.  Cedar Waxwing
  12.  Grouse
  13.  Bluebird

Hope this is of interest (or provides a good laugh) to any budding Oologists !! My daughter has gotten the biggest kick of out these....eggs she can handle without any worry of a goopy mess if she gets a little rowdy.  Our kittens also find them to be very appealing, less for my painting I am sure, and more for the irregular rolling they do on our hardwood floors when batted around by kitty paws.











2 comments:

  1. Awesome Miss, I wish I had thought f all these cool projects to do with my kids when they were younger. Look forward to your next post.
    Kelly

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love those. At first I actually thought they were real!

    ReplyDelete

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