Oldest bird eggs in the collection

The oldest egg registered in the Te Papa collection is a common guillemot egg collected on the Orkney Islands, Scotland, in 1856. Other early eggs (1859-1864) are from Greenland, Poland and the United States. The oldest New Zealand eggs in the collection are two eggs of the extinct New Zealand quail collected in the Nelson Province in January 1867. These eggs are unlike other quail eggs in the collection, and so their identity is questionable.