Egg collecting and bird life of Australia is a quarto-sized book authored and published in 1907 by field ornithologist and oologist Sidney William Jackson. The full title text reads: "Egg collecting and bird life of Australia. Catalogue and data of the "Jacksonian oological collection", illustrated with numerous photographs depicting various incidents and items in connection with this interesting study, which has been the life work of the Author."
The book is essentially a 171-page catalogue of the collection of nearly 2000 eggs, representing over 500 species of Australian birds, accumulated by Jackson from his boyhood until his early thirties. Many he collected personally, especially in the area within reach of Grafton, north-eastern New South Wales, then containing large areas of subtropical rainforest, with others from further afield being acquired through correspondence. The inclusion of numerous anecdotes about how the eggs he collected personally were obtained, with notes on the birds and their habitats as well as the many photographs of people and activities related to the collecting, add autobiographical and historical dimensions to the work.
The author says in his preface:
Exemplifying both Jackson's prose style and his approach to his work, the following extract (omitting references to other works and illustrations) is from his coverage of the rufous scrub-bird Atrichornis rufescens â then Atrichia rufescens:
In 1906 Jackson sold his collection to H.L. White, a wealthy pastoralist of "Belltrees", an extensive grazing property near Scone, New South Wales, who had financed the publication of Jackson's catalogue. Not only did Jackson's collection form a key part of the H. L. White Collection, but in 1907 White employed Jackson as curator of the collection as well as a collector whom he sent on several quests around Australia to further expand it. Jackson remained in White's employment until White's death in 1927 when the egg collection passed to the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne.