Background:

This series of color prints is from a popular guide to bird egg collecting from the late 1800s in England.  Each print features a number of bird eggs, with the bird identified at the bottom of the print.  The preface to the guide states "This is in no way intended to encourage the wholesale and useless collecting of birds' eggs, but is intended to convey a better knowledge, and thus secure a higher appreciation, of the beauty and poetry of Bird life."