Althouse: Breakage.

June 13, 2015

Breakage.

20 comments:

Meade said...: 7. Take any random square foot and observe the infinite beauty of the universe.; 6/13/15, 9:15 PM
Original Mike said...: "7. Take any random square foot and observe the infinite beauty of the universe."

All the way down.; 6/13/15, 9:37 PM
Quaestor said...: Meadowlark eggs, possibly. Were they found on the ground?; 6/13/15, 9:39 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Photographed where we found them, on the sidewalk under a tree.; 6/13/15, 9:47 PM
Quaestor said...: Too there isn't something familiar in the shot, such as a coin, for scale. That's an old birder's trick.; 6/13/15, 9:50 PM
Quaestor said...: Northern Cardinal, most likely, though it's a bit late for eggs. (Second clutch?) Meadowlarks avoid urban areas.; 6/13/15, 9:52 PM
Quaestor said...: Too there isn't something familiar in the shot

I meant to type "too bad."; 6/13/15, 9:58 PM
LordSomber said...: Also possibly sparrow's eggs. All quite similar.; 6/13/15, 9:59 PM
chickelit said...: Eier zerbrechende

I'm intrigued by the colorful concrete aggregate. I'll bet those are regional species.; 6/13/15, 10:02 PM
chickelit said...: Calcium is a major component of both "living" and the "dead" matter in that photo; silicates vs. carbonates is the determiner.

This is calcium's finest hour; 6/13/15, 10:07 PM
chickelit said...: Speckled (as opposed to immaculate).; 6/13/15, 10:11 PM
Quaestor said...: @ LordSomber

Which is why scale is helpful. Those eggs look like they didn't hatch, they're too intact. A likely culprit is a cowbird, which is a nest parasite. The cowbird egg hatches quickly, usually before the host's eggs. The newly hatched cowbird chick will push the host's eggs out of the nest so that it gets the exclusive attention of both foster parents.; 6/13/15, 10:20 PM
kimsch said...: My mom had a robin's egg like that on her walk. Small hole in one side, didn't look as if anything had hatched.; 6/13/15, 10:50 PM
clint said...: Quaestor beat me to it.

We had a cowbird egg this year, in the nest of the eastern phoebes that patrol our front lawn. Nasty things (cowbirds, not phoebes). The phoebes have started a second nest, thankfully.; 6/14/15, 3:28 AM
Ann Althouse said...: 1. The eggs are definitely not from hatched birds. They fell and died, for whatever reason.

2. I thought the pebbles in the concrete conveyed the size. About an inch long. Pretty tiny, I'd say.; 6/14/15, 5:55 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Here's an article about cowbird behavior, with a photo of cowbird eggs in a nest with house finch eggs. Maybe the eggs I saw are house finch eggs.; 6/14/15, 6:02 AM
Hagar said...: Or a violent downburst.
Idiot doves build nests in my arbor vitae, and when the wind gusts to 50-60, the eggs fall out.; 6/14/15, 7:01 AM
Bob Ellison said...: We have bluebirds! I saw four of them in one tree yesterday. Presumably two nesting pairs. They split into two pairs after a minute, and two of them headed into the bluebird box attached to a nearby tree.

What a sight! That color is amazing.; 6/14/15, 8:19 AM
pm317 said...: I think it is a Robin.. at least that is what it is in my backyard when I find broken blue eggs. Kind of sad.; 6/14/15, 9:05 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: They look like the house finch eggs that were in a nest below the gutter of my house. A cowbird replaced one of the eggs in that nest and left it on my driveway.

In the end, the cowbird made a bad choice. House finches don't feed their young insects and cowbirds require protein. Therefore cowbirds don't normally survive in house finch nests. In my case, the house finch chicks hatched and fledged. The cowbird disappeared shortly after hatching.; 6/14/15, 10:08 PM