The Club is delighted to organise a series of monthly (September-April) Club-wide online talks for members, in addition to local branch events. Not an SOC member? Find out more about membership and the many perks it offers, including access to the winter talks programme and the Club's quarterly journal Scottish Birds.
Prof. Tim Birkhead: The Most Perfect Thing; Q & A
We'll look forward to giving a warm welcome to Prof. Tim Birkhead, a leading expert on ornithology and evolutionary biology and author of several books. The evening will take the form of a Q&A session, focussing on Tim's book The Most Perfect Thing (published 2016). Pat Monaghan, Regius Professor of Zoology at University of Glasgow, will kindly join us on the night in the role of Interviewer and SOC Lothian Branch Committee Member, Mike Thornton, will Chair the evening.
About the talk:
Birds' eggs are the most wonderful of evolution's creations, hence the title: The Most Perfect Thing, for this is how the American women's rights activist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, described them in 1862. The colour, markings, texture, shape and size of eggs - both inside and out - have fascinated biologists and non-biologists alike for centuries. In some cases that fascination became an obsession, making the study of birds' eggs dangerous territory for biologists.
Tim's own (scientific) obsession with birds' eggs emerged from his long-term study of Guillemots, renowned for unusually pointed (pyriform) and brilliantly coloured eggs. Why that extraordinary shape? Why that incredible variation in colour and markings? Why that relatively large size? Tim decided to re-examine all these topics, and to guide his investigations and to make sense of what he found, he had to study as many species' eggs as possible. It was a roller coaster of a ride and he discovered much new about both the biology of birds' eggs and their wide-reaching cultural aspects.
About our speaker:
Tim Birkhead FRS is emeritus professor of behaviour and evolution at the University of Sheffield. His research on promiscuity and sperm competition in birds re-shaped our understanding of bird mating systems. Tim is committed to the public understanding of science as he has written several popular science books, including Promiscuity (2000), The Wisdom of Birds (2008), Bird Sense (2012), The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Birds’ Egg (2016), What It’s Like to Be a Bird (2021), and Birds and Us (2022). His children’s book What It’s Like to Be a Bird (2022) illustrated by Catherine Rayner won the English Association’s Margaret Mallett Award in May 2022.
Between 1980 and 2018 Tim served as the Honorary Curator of the Alfred Denny Museum (Zoology Museum) at the University of Sheffield. In addition to his role as a researcher and teacher, he has promoted evolutionary ideas, through talks to the public, and articles in the media, and on television. His TED talk has been viewed over 100,000 times. Tim has featured on The Life Scientific (Radio 4) and The Infinite Monkey Cage (Radio 4), BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions (broadcast 17 April 2022), and most recently on Start the Week (in March 2025). Sir David Attenborough referred to Tim’s book The Most Perfect Thing (in BBC Wildlife magazine) as ‘Magnificent’, and in 2018 Attenborough and Birkhead went on to make a BBC documentary, Attenborough’s Wonder of Eggs. Tim is married with three children and a dog, and in his spare time paints and plays the guitar.
Images © Tim Birkhead
