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Sizing Up Eggs
How large is a hummingbird's egg? An owl's egg? An ostrich's egg? Here's how common fruits and vegetables can help you and your child size up these and other bird eggs.
What you need:
- small apricot (or large strawberry)
- avocado
- chicken egg
- large grapefruit
- large seedless grape
- pea
- small tangerine
- books about bird eggs or egg chart (See Resources section below.)
What you do:
- Put the fruits, vegetables, and egg on a table for your child to examine. Explain that each of the fruits and vegetables is about the same size as a real bird egg. Ask your child to arrange the "eggs" from smallest to largest.
- Point to the chicken egg and ask your child what bird lays it. That's easy. But what bird lays an egg the size of the pea? The grape? The apricot? The tangerine? The avocado? The grapefruit?
- Look up pictures of birds in bird or bird nest field guides and match them to their appropriate egg size.
Possible answers:
- pea = hummingbird
- grape = American robin
- apricot = crow
- tangerine = great horned owl
- avocado = Canada goose
- grapefruit = ostrich
What you talk about:
Ask your child the following questions:
- Does the size of an egg say anything about the size of the bird that laid it? (Smaller birds lay smaller eggs, and larger birds lay larger eggs.)
- Why do you think some eggs are speckled? (Speckles make the eggs harder for enemies to see in the birds' nests. Plain eggs are usually laid by birds that hide them well out of sight - in a tree hole, for example.)
Resource
Illustration: Art Explosion