How large is a hummingbird’s egg? An owl’s egg? Here’s how common fruits and vegetables can help you size up these and other bird eggs.

What You Need

• Small apricot (or large strawberry)
• Avocado
• Chicken egg
• Large seedless grape
• Large grapefruit
• Pea
• Small tangerine

What You Do

1. Arrange Fruit By Size
   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.
2. Match the “Eggs” to Birds
   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

     

3. Talk About What You Learned
   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.)
4. Resources
   A good children’s field guide is Birds, Nests, and Eggs by Mel Boring (Norwood Press).