Pouches Gallery

Collecting Eggs at Flamborough Head

Collecting seagull's eggs at Flamborough Head, Yorkshire. A traditional practice for farmers whose land adjoined the cliff edge, which gave them a legal right to supplement their income by selling eggs. The farmer sub-licenced gangs of three or four climmers, to gather eggs of the gulls, common guillemot, razorbill and others from the cliff side. It was a perilous business, requiring fitness and skill, but the rewards must have been great - in 1908 such eggs commanded a shilling a dozen (about the same as a hundredweight of coal) and it was estimated that gangs could collect up to 300 or 400 eggs a day in season. Date: 1911

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

General Officer's Sabretache worn by Lt Gen Henry William Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge

1268373 General Officer's Sabretache worn by Lt Gen Henry William Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, as colonel of 7th (Queen's Own) Light Dragoons, c.1815 (red Morocco leather & gold embroidery) by English School, (19th century); National Army Museum, London; (add.info.: Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey (17 May 1768 - 29 April 1854) commanded the British cavalry at Waterloo. At the end of the Battle of Waterloo his right knee was shattered by a piece of shot which narrowly missed the Duke of Wellington. He was carried to a house at Waterloo where his leg was amputated.); A© National Army Museum ; English, out of copyright

© © National Army Museum / Bridgeman Images

Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)

Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) group on shore. The throat pouch, usually pale pink, changes colour dramatically during courtship. The forward half becomes bright salmon pink, parts of the top and base of the bill change to cobalt blue, and a black diagonal strip appears from the base to the tip. Shoalwater Islands Marine Park

© Ian Beattie/AUSCAPE All rights reserved