The Most Perfect Thing Quotes

“When I mentioned to a friend I was writing a book about eggs he told me to be sure to mention how in Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" the young Arabella incubates a sky-blue egg of a song bird in the cleavage of her bosom ... When I checked, I was disappointed to find it wasn't a song thrush egg, but that of a chicken ... The original image in my mind disintegrated like the sound of a vinyl record after the power has been turned off.”
― Tim Birkhead, The Most Perfect Thing: Inside and Outside a Bird's Egg

“Ingeniously, [Heinrich Wickmann] was able to use a pencil to mark that bit of the egg he could see inside the hen's oviduct, through its cloaca prior to laying. (I can just imagine his wife popping into his study with a cup of coffee and seeing Wickmann with his pencil up a hen's bottom: 'What are you doing, dear?' she asks...).”
― Tim Birkhead, The Most Perfect Thing: Inside and Outside a Bird's Egg

“Working on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, Beissinger’s study species was the wonderfully named pearly-eyed thrasher – a common thrush-like bird.”
― Tim Birkhead, The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg