As I was mowing the lawn the other day I noticed an odd looking blue object out of the corner of my eye. I thought perhaps it was a piece of candy or something blown in by the wind.
I went back and looked and found this pretty blue egg in the grass:
Blue Egg in the Grass, f/2.4 1/50 4.3mm ISO 64
– click for viewing full screen
I looked around wondering where the egg had come from and noticed the birdhouse had been blown around by a recent windstorm. The duct tape fix I had applied last year had weathered over the winter and now the birdhouse door was facing the wrong way. It looked very difficult for the birds to get in and out of it.
The birds hadn’t been by the birdhouse all morning so I figured that they may have abandoned it or were not using it yet this season. I got out the ladder and fixed the birdhouse with some bailing wire so it wouldn't move to far in the wind.
The birdhouse with the bailing wire fix, f/2.4 1/1291 4.3mm ISO 50
– click for viewing full screen
I thought I might clean the birdhouse out while I was at it so I started removing a nest that was in it. I figured it was left over from last season but looking closely I saw a little blue egg in it just like the one on the ground:
Blue egg in the nest, f/2.4 1/17 4.3mm ISO 250
– click for viewing full screen
I left the egg in the nest and other egg in the grass and started to put the ladder away. Somehow it didn’t seem right to leave the egg in the grass so I picked it up and held it. It almost seemed like there was something alive inside.
It felt like the egg should go back in the nest, so I placed it in there with the other egg. I figured the bird would toss it out again if it wanted to.
The next day I saw mama starling (I assume it was female) poking her head out of the birdhouse and looking around. I was very happy to see her there.
As near as I can figure, I thought that the mother bird may have tossed the egg out when the birdhouse got turned around by the wind. With such difficult access she may have felt it would be too hard to try to raise two chicks inside the house.
Rather than have them both grow up without enough food she could have made the decision to push one of them out.
I’m not sure what was really going on, but mothers make hard decisions all the time and fathers do too.
Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments. The pictures were taken by me with my Galaxy S9+