A tough egg to crack

Last summer, I kept seeing song sparrows and gray catbirds coming in and out of a dense patch of rosebushes.

A song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) emerging from the rose bushes.

I guessed that they had built nests somewhere deep inside.  Although I eventually found the song sparrow nest, I was disappointed that I could not locate the catbird nest.  So, as a surprise, my mother put a wooden egg in an old nest and left it for me to stumble upon.

A large, blue egg in a nest.  (Not a real egg.)

 However, something else found the egg first.

When I heard crows squabbling, I looked out and saw that one of the crows was sitting on the ground by the rosebushes and attempting to eat what appeared to be a gray catbird egg.  Of course, not knowing that a wooden egg had been placed outside just minutes before, I assumed that the crow had found and raided the catbird nest.  The truth only emerged when I shared the sad news about the catbird nest with my mother.  She quickly led me to the nest where the wooden egg had been. As she had suspected, the nest was empty.  When the wooden egg finally reappeared in the yard several days later, it was in splinters.  (The photograph of the egg in the nest above showed a reenactment using a spare egg.  We immediately brought that second egg back inside!)