Juevos

With spring comes bird nests and eggs... We've had at least two robin nests in the yard that I now of - one in the spruce in the backyard, the other in the arbor vitae. And in both cases, the sparrows have been terrorizing the robins, sitting in the same tree, making all sorts of fuss, etc. In the last week or so I found two broken robin eggs in the back lawn, and then this afternoon I found this:

There wasn't a single crack on it, so taking a risk, I put it in the robin next in the arbor vitae just to see if she'll notice it and try to hatch it.  No, I'm not getting my hopes up.  Even though it felt warm, it might've been out in the yard too long, and it might be from a different nest, and the robins may have given up on the nest in the spruce.  We'll see...

And then outside the living room window is a holly bush, where a couple cardinals were making all sorts of noise the other night.  A closer look showed there was a nest in the holly, just a couple feet off the ground.  I have to say, compare to sparrow nests, and even dried mud robin nests, a cardinal nest is VERY tidy looking!

Looks like maybe it's made out of dried grasses from the lot next door?  Too fine for straw, and too light for pine needles I think.  I hope nothing bad happens and we have baby cardinals this spring....annnnnd then I have to hope that they don't fledge out into the yard in front of the dogs (we lost a baby robin last to Daisy that way last year - didn't even know there was a robin's nest in the particular shrub!).