Edgar Percival Chance (1881–1955) was a British businessman, ornithologist and oologist who amassed a collection of 25,000 birds' eggs.

He was a wealthy businessman and industrialist who managed the family chemicals business, Chance and Hunt, based in Oldbury, West Midlands, which provided chemicals to Chance Brothers, the famous glassmakers based in Smethwick, Birmingham, between the first and second world wars.

The film, The Cuckoo's Secret, was shot at Pound Green Common in Worcestershire,[3] showing for the first time that female cuckoos lay their eggs directly into the nests of their hosts, rather than laying them on the ground and placing them in the nests with their bills as was previously widely believed.

[4] He also achieved a world record for collecting the most eggs – 25 – from a single female cuckoo in the course of one breeding season (1922).

[8] Chance's fraternal grandmother was Cornelia de Peyster, whose ancestors were Dutch and Huguenot settlers in British North America and Loyalist to the Crown.