Clearly, I’m not alone in seeing this atypical pattern. A recent study found that the mild winter has set the clock ahead for nesting season throughout much of the nation. And that means many of us could have a treasure trove of some of nature’s finest eggs hidden in our yards this holiday.

Not Your Typical Eggs

Ostrich and Egg by Janet Gatto

As these two species demonstrate, egg size usually is related to the size of the bird that lays it. But there are exceptions. New Zealand’s kiwi, for example, is only half as big as a white pelican, but its egg is several times larger than the pelican’s. A kiwi egg equals about a fourth of its parent’s body weight, which explains a female’s enormous belly during the gestation period and the egg’s strange, oblong shape. If the egg was round, the bird could not lay it.

Welcoming Birds to Your Home

Bluebird Eggs by Kathy Grant

And while you’re at it, take lots of photos of the wildlife that you entice to your yard and see elsewhere, and then submit your favorite images to National Wildlife’s 42nd Annual Photo Contest. The deadline is July 16, so there’s still plenty of time to enter. This year’s competition features some great prizes and you can submit photos in seven categories, including one devoted just to birds and another to baby animals. Happy bird—and egg—watching this Easter!

You can create a haven for wildlife in your own backyard and have it designated as an official Certified Wildlife Habitat^® site today!>>

The photo that generated the most accusations

BILL ROTH (ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS/MCT/LANDOV)

After we published Bill Roth’s picture of a moose sitting in a backyard baby pool in Anchorage, Alaska, in a 1999 issue, we were besieged with angry messages from members accusing us of using computer trickery. In response, in a subsequent issue of the magazine, we published another Roth photo taken from a different angle showing the animal’s full body inside the pool. While it didn’t generate many letters, the second photo did produce one reaction that I still remember today. “I was wrong in assuming you would doctor a photo,” a member in Oregon wrote. “Please accept the enclosed donation to NWF as an apology.”

The photo that produced the most smiles

KATHARINE FENG (MINDEN PICTURES)

It’s impossible to verify how many people actually smiled after looking at it, but this image of a four-week-old panda cub produced a large reader response, including two dozen letters from students in a California elementary school class who told us it was their favorite photo ever. Katharine Feng took the picture in a captive-breeding facility in China for a 2005 NW article. “I photographed the cub as it stretched and yawned,” she told us. “Its eyes were not yet opened, so it could not see.” Feng assured us that her presence did not cause any problems for the cub.

The photo that spawned the most mail from readers

DANIEL J. COX

When it first appeared in the magazine in a 1998 essay about wildlife in winter, Daniel J. Cox’s heart-wrenching picture of a polar bear mother and cub in northern Manitoba huddling over another cub that had just died generated an outpouring of emotional letters from NWF members. Cox told us it was “a tragic scene, but one that I believe needed to be documented with a camera so people can see how difficult wild creatures’ lives really are.”

The photo that got the most staff votes

STEFFEN BINKE

I should qualify that this Steffen Binke image of a dwarf minke whale in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef received the most votes from the judges in the magazine’s 2009 annual photo contest. It was awarded the grand prize. Binke said he took the photo with a fish-eye lens, only a few feet away from the massive creature. “It was a great moment,” he recalled. “I am still sure I could hear its heartbeat and breathing.”

The National Wildlife Photo Contest

Now in its 42^nd year, the National Wildlife Photo Contest is open for submissions, and you don’t have to travel to distant places like the Great Barrier Reef to create a winning image. Sometimes, in fact, the best photographic subjects can be found right in your own backyard. This year’s winners will be published in the magazine and will receive some great prizes. Entrants also can participate in our separate People’s Choice competition. For details, including how to enter, visit www.nwf.org/photocontest.  To see more nature and wildlife images, go to www.nwf.org/photozone.

ON DECEMBER 6, the United States will celebrate a conservation milestone. Fifty years ago on that date, for the first time in the nation’s history, U.S. authorities gave federal protection to an entire ecosystem. Located in northeastern Alaska, the place we now call the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge spans five different ecological zones and provides safe habitat for hundreds of species, including the highest density of land-denning polar bears in the country.

Today, however, the nation’s largest wildlife refuge is more renowned for a decades-long controversy over whether to open its coastal plain to oil development than for the biological reasons it was established. But those reasons are not lost on Michael Engelhard, an Alaska-based author and wilderness guide who has visited the refuge on several occasions. In the December/January issue of National Wildlife, he describes his love for what he calls “the land of stunted—or no—trees” and explains why global warming could pose an even greater threat to the region than drilling.

In the five decades since the refuge was created, Engelhard reports, winter temperatures in Arctic Alaska have risen by as much as 7 degrees F, and the ramifications of that increase on the area’s natural resources and environment could be enormous. To find out more, see his article “The Arctic Refuge Turns 50.”