Most Easter-egg hunts conclude with a bit of chocolate and some discarded tinfoil—maybe a sugar crash if the situation gets out of hand. In the United Kingdom, the pursuit of a different kind of egg has resulted in more serious consequences, including police raids, sting operations, and a long record of arrests. In 2013, the writer Julian Rubinstein recounted the tumult in “Operation Easter,” an article named for a countrywide crackdown on egg collectors. What was once a scholarly pastime for natural historians—taking wild-bird eggs out of nests to study—later became a criminal act, as laws changed to protect endangered species and to conserve their ecosystems. But changes in the legal code did little to deter a committed underworld of egg hunters, a secretive group whose members risk their freedom, and sometimes their lives, to steal rare eggs. (When one unlucky collector met his end after falling out of a tree, a London tabloid published its coverage under the headline “NEST IN PEACE.”) In contrast to other forms of theft, the human trespassers in these cases don’t generally seem motivated by money—and their risk-taking, on occasion, has bordered on mania. “Thank God you’ve come,” one tearful collector told police, shortly before they discovered thirty-six hundred eggs in his home. “I can’t stop.” | 
