Eggs cruciating.

Come on, kid; time to leave the nest.

Or not.

I mentioned the robin who built a nest under my deck a couple of weeks ago. Well, I popped up to see what was in the nest while she was out getting breakfast. This was the best shot I could get with the phone. I think there was only the one egg, but I couldn't get up high enough to see---and I thought that if I hung around too long I'd have a psycho robin attacking my head.

I was surprised to see only the one egg, but there may have been another. Bad angle. But there may have been just the one egg---or just the one egg remaining.

It's hard to raise kids these days. I gather that the main enemy to eggs are other birds. It's tragic to see bird-on-bird violence like that, to see birds' inhumanity to bird. Inbirdanity. Whatever.

I found this one on the grass a couple of weeks back:

My first thought is that some bird laid the egg and it fell out of a nest and rolled onto the driveway. Which would have meant a roll of at least fifty feet. Hey, I'm not what you call a naturalist, all right?

Anyway, I thought I would coddle the egg, keep it warm, and hatch it, like Horton Hatches the Egg, you know? Maybe get a tiny bird that looked like me? Except that there was a little hole in the egg, as it happened, and it looked like something had sucked the insides out. All I had was this speckled shell.

So I hope Mrs. Robin's egg is doing better. But it's a hard world if you're an egg.