A catalogue of birds’ eggs in the Durban Natural Science Museum

Allan, D.G. & McInnes, A.M. 2002. A catalogue of birds’ eggs in the Durban Natural Science Museum. Durban Museum Novitates 27: 3-27. A computerized data-base cataloguing the egg collection in the Durban Natural Science Museum contains details for some 1730 clutches (93% of which are still extant in the collection), covering 545 bird species (59% of which breed in southern Africa). Major contributors have been A.D. Millar (ca 617 clutches), R.J. Greaves (ca183 clutches), I. Browning (ca220 clutches), and P.R. Barnes (ca220 clutches). The Millar collection achieved particular prominence through a detailed ‘descriptive list’ published by E.C. Chubb that became ‘an important standard reference work’. All clutches with details of locality come from Africa (92%) or Europe (8%), except for two clutches from New Zealand. The vast majority of all clutches (74%; and 81% of the African material) come from South Africa (1188 clutches), followed by Kenya (166 clutches), the United Kingdom (119 clutches), Mozambique (43 clutches), Lesotho (27 clutches) and Zimbabwe (21 clutches), with only small holdings (1-12 clutches) from 14 other countries. The vast majority of the South African clutches (1000 clutches; 83%), and the majority of the total number of clutches in the collection, come from KwaZulu-Natal, although all eight other South African provinces are represented by some material (3-94 clutches). Of clutches with details of date of collection, 39% come from the period 1890-1909 (mainly from the Millar collection) and 46% from the period 1940-1969 (mainly from the Greaves, Browning and Barnes collections); 96% of all clutches come from the period before 1970. A lengthy appendix presents details of all African clutches in the collection for which details of either locality or date (in the vast majority of cases both) are known (including geographical co-ordinates for localities and individual egg dimensions). This appendix covers some 1490 of the ca1730 clutches (86%) in the collection. All brood parasite records are identified. Some 69 individual clutches of especial interest are briefly discussed, taking particular care to draw attention to definite or potential mis-identifications of significant clutches, especially those mentioned in Chubb’s catalogue, species evidencing range retractions (particularly as most of the clutches are 30-100 years old), and other instances of interesting distributional information.