Whose Eggs Are These? Trivia Quiz

I have made a point of saying "American" robin, because the eggs of the English robin are white with brown freckles, and might be confused here with the photo of quail eggs. Canadians as well as Americans are likely to be familiar with the blue eggs of "our" robin and to know that there's a colour known as "robin egg blue".

The female lays one egg each day, with a typical clutch being three or four eggs laid over the same number of days. Mother robin sits on the eggs for about two weeks until they hatch, and the babies are ready to leave the nest in about another fortnight.

Like chicken eggs, quail eggs are often cultivated and gathered for use as a food source. As quail's eggs are quite small, it can take up to three of them to approximate one chicken's egg.

In the wild, quails nest on or near the ground, and their eggs can take from 16 to 23 days to hatch. Clutch size varies, but a dozen would be average, having been laid at a rate of one a day.

Northern cardinal eggs vary in colour from off-white to a pale greenish blue, all with brownish to purplish speckles. Clutch size varies from two to five eggs, and a pair of cardinals will raise two to three broods each year. Incubation time for each brood, before hatchlings appear, is about a fortnight, with mother doing the incubating.

The turtle eggs in this image were discovered and photographed by a member of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in a wildlife refuge near the Mississippi River. Turtles bury their eggs in sand both to keep them warm, and to protect them from predators. The eggs can take up to two months to hatch.

Most people will be able to recognize a chicken egg, and might well have a dozen somewhere in the kitchen, that have been harvested from hen house or "factory". If, however, a hen "goes broody" and is allowed to hatch some of her eggs, she will sit on them for up to 21 days, hopefully being rewarded with chicks at the end of that time. Egg colour varies depending on the particular breed of chicken.

The mute swan (Cygnus olor) is native to much of Europe, and exists in parts of North America as an introduced species. The nest in the image is one being monitored by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Michigan. Cygnets emerge from the eggs after just over a month, as part of a clutch of between four and ten eggs. They are not ready to fly for another few months.

I have to say it: these eggs remind me of eyeballs!

The eggs in this image are of the near-threatened California red-legged frog, photographed in 2017. This particular amphibian is native to California, and likes the protection of cattails for laying its eggs, from which tadpoles will emerge. These will develop into young frogs in from seven to 13 months.
Other frog species have similar, if varying, life cycles.

Atlantic salmon spend much of their lives in the saltwater environment provided by that ocean. When it is time to spawn, however, these fish return to their native rivers in England, Scotland, Canada and other surrounding countries to lay their eggs.

It is in this freshwater environment that the eggs hatch, and the young pass through several stages before being ready to journey themselves to the ocean.

The emu is a very large (and somewhat scary) flightless bird, native to Australia. Its very large eggs are dark green in colour and a clutch can consist of from five to fifteen eggs. It is the male who incubates the eggs, which take up to eight weeks to be ready to hatch. Meanwhile, the female may go off and nest again, or she may stay to defend the nest. Papa emu stops eating, drinking and pretty much everything else whilst sitting on the eggs.

The Nile crocodile is found in over twenty countries in Africa, usually in a freshwater environment. A month or two after mating, females dig a burrow in the riverbank in which to lay their eggs (between 25 and 80, depending on her size), and then guard it for the next three months whilst the eggs incubate.

When she hears the about to hatch hatchlings chirping, she opens the nest so they can escape, and may even carry them to the water in her mouth.