EXECUTIVE DEVELOPS `EGGS-TRAORDINARY' COLLECTION : AT A GLANCE.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

Ed Harrison is the owner of a Westwood skyscraper, the president of a successful oil company and the manager of a prime portfolio of Los Angeles real estate.

But his friends just call him ``The Egg Man'' or, as he prefers to be known, the last of the great oologists.

Since the day he stumbled upon his first sandpiper egg while searching out stray golf balls in a Wyoming creek bed, Harrison has collected more than 1 million eggs. He picked out the first few thousand himself, then set about buying the collections of others, slowly amassing eggs representing more than 3,600 species.

Today his collection includes eggs from common hummingbirds to extinct winged creatures that would make a T. rex flinch.

He doesn't do it for status. Friends at the California Club, the Beach Club and other organizations where millionaire executives mix are plainly perplexed to learn that the genial 82-year-old has the largest collection of eggs in the world.

``I've had plenty of people laugh at me,'' he said. ``People tell me what an awfully silly thing it is that I do. But this silly thing took a lot of guts - I've swung down over cliffs and risked my neck plenty of times. And when you get down to it, it's damned important.''

For years, Harrison kept his collection in a building in the back yard of his Brentwood estate. At night he would wander into the building he called the Fun House, slide open the cabinet drawers and just stare - imagining far-off landscapes alive with exotic birds.

The collection eventually outgrew the Fun House. So in a tremendous feat of delicacy, Harrison moved every last egg to an anonymous office park in Camarillo. Occupying a bland warehouse that looks much like the manufacturing plants that surround it, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology houses Harrison's eggs along with an extensive repository of stuffed birds, bird nests and ornithological books.

His passion began as a boyhood hobby. The son of an oil company geologist, Harrison often wandered off into the countryside in search of eggs.

Most were oval, but others were pointed or perfectly round. Some were white, but many were smudged or speckled in color. A few were as smooth as enamel, but others were pebbled in texture.

Harrison kept scrupulous notes, consulting field guides and comparing his discoveries to other collections.

Oology, the studying and collecting of eggs, was a common boyhood hobby akin to acquiring butterflies or stamps. Practitioners traded prized eggs and kept elaborate logs of their expeditions. A professional oologist named Kelly Truesdale gained a reputation taking trips along the sandstone cliffs of San Luis Obispo, lowering himself down by a rope tied to the horn on his mule's saddle, in pursuit of prairie falcon eggs.

``They were part adventurers and part scientists,'' said Carl Thelander, director of the Camarillo-based foundation. ``Many were as involved in the sport of collecting as the science of the eggs.''

Oology fell out of favor about 1940, as preservationists began protesting sports that traded in wildlife. The state Department of Fish and Game now forbids the collection and sale of bird eggs without special permits.

But eggs remained a passion for Harrison. He took over his father's business, built up a bountiful oil company and developed several prime plots of real estate. He also married - his wife of 42 years puts up gamely with his passion - and had three children.

But he never stopped adding to his collection, picking up specimens from whomever came along - from a Pasadena housewife clearing out her garage to an Isle of Man biologist selling off his prized collection of jewel-like hawk eggs.

Harrison and four other oologists established the Western Foundation 40 years ago to consolidate and preserve their collections. Research conducted at the foundation has helped determine the effects of chemicals like DDT on eggshellH thickness and even inspired the designers of home insulation.

The largest egg in the collection is the size of a watermelon, the product of an extinct bird called the aephyornis. Standing more than twice the height of an ostrich, it was known to the natives of Madagascar as the elephant bird. It went the way of the dodo sometime in the 1600s.

On the other end of the size spectrum is an egg the size of a Tic-Tac, laid by a Haitian hummingbird.

Harrison insists that birds are not harmed by the collection of their eggs, because they routinely produce another clutch as soon as one goes missing.

``When you take an egg, all you're doing is increasing their love life,'' he said.

Widely known to scientists, the foundation is a mystery to most neighbors. Thelander said the group keeps a low profile locally because the collection is too fragile and the facilities too small to offer public tours.

The collection contains countless lessons about the lives of birds, but Thelander says it also contains a basic lesson about human nature.

``There's something instinctual about collecting things - even Native Americans collected oddities they believed had some special power,'' Thelander said. ``Harrison takes it to another level.

``He could have been a world-class art collector or any number of things with the amount of money he's put into it over the years. To him the eggs are as irreplaceable as a Van Gogh or a Monet.''

But Harrison sees his collection much more simply.

``People think I'm a little drunk and I guess I am,'' he said. ``Who in the hell would want a bunch of bird eggs? - I have people arrogantly say that to me all the time. Stupid people.''

Established in 1956, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology has amassed an extensive collection of eggs, specimens and ornithological artifacts. The collection includes:

About 1 million eggs. The largest collection of eggs in the world includes about 180,000 clutches from 3,600 species.

AHbout 18,000 nests. The largest collection of nests includes tiny clusters of twigs and entire tree trunks.

About 52,000 study specimens. Called bird study skins, the specimens represent more than 3,800 species.

About 200,000 photographs. Color transparencies and black-and-white images taken by bird watchers and scientists are kept, along with more than 100,000 feet of movie film and videotape on birds.

About 8,000 books. One of the largest collections of ornithological literature in the world includes handwritten journals, field notes and scientific journals.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, box

PHOTO (1 -- color) Ed Harrison, 82, has the nation's largest collection of eggs.

David R. Crane/Daily News

(2 -- color) Carl Thelander, director of the Camarillo-based Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, holds the egg of an extinct elephant bird.

(3 -- color) The foundation has the world's largest collection, including these from Latin America.

Tina Gerson/Daily News

Box: At a glance (see text)