![\"curlew-egg-8194\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/curlew-egg-8194.jpg\" "\\"curlew-egg-8194\\"")
<\/p>\nA couple of days ago we spotted a far off\u00a0Long-billed Curlew in flight with something in its bill.\u00a0 It was much too distant for decent photos but I was curious about what it was carrying so I scoped it with my 500mm.\u00a0\u00a0Even at that great distance it was obvious that the bird was carrying an egg.\u00a0 I actually fired off a couple of frames but the curlew was so far away that I just deleted\u00a0those images\u00a0when I got home.\u00a0 I wish I hadn’t now…<\/p>\n
I’ve seen and photographed birds carrying egg fragments from the nest after the hatching of their chicks\u00a0multiple times but this seemed a little strange because it looked like an entire egg rather than just a\u00a0 fragment\u00a0(which I didn’t think at all likely or even\u00a0possible).\u00a0 Another thing that strikes me as unusual is the fact that this bird was several hundred feet in the air and flew a significant distance with the egg even though BNA Online says that\u00a0when curlews dispose of eggshells they fly only “several meters” from the nest before alighting to drop the shell.<\/p>\n
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We watched the bird fly and then eventually land on a gravel road\u00a0where we were able to find the abandoned egg.\u00a0 Here you see it undisturbed as we found it.\u00a0 Now I’m no curlew expert but I’m going to speculate that this egg didn’t “hatch”.\u00a0 It doesn’t look like it has been pipped from the inside by the egg tooth of the chick and besides the hole in the egg simply has to be too small for the chick to have emerged through it.\u00a0 In addition, some of the broken fragments held in place by the shell membrane seem to be “caved in” rather than “caved out” as you might expect to happen with the emergence of a chick.<\/p>\n
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![\"curlew-egg-8198\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/curlew-egg-8198.jpg\" "\\"curlew-egg-8198\\"")
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Based on that it’s my suspicion that the contents of this egg were eaten by a predator in the nest and that the parent curlew instinctively removed it for sanitary purposes.\u00a0 If so\u00a0it reminds me once again of just how precarious successful reproduction often is in the wild.<\/p>\n
I was somewhat\u00a0surprised by the large size of the egg so I asked Mia to hold it while I took a\u00a0couple of photos to give a sense of scale.\u00a0 I was also struck by the shape of the hole in the egg.\u00a0 I immediately saw the outline of a bird with its\u00a0back to me and looking away.\u00a0 Perhaps I’ve spent too much time with Rorschach inkblots…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of days ago we spotted a far off\u00a0Long-billed Curlew in flight with something in its bill.\u00a0 It was much too distant for decent photos but I was curious about what it was carrying so I scoped it with my 500mm.\u00a0\u00a0Even at that great distance it was obvious that the bird was carrying an egg.\u00a0 I actually fired off a couple of frames but the curlew was so far away that I just deleted\u00a0those images\u00a0when I got home.\u00a0 I wish I hadn’t now… I’ve seen and photographed birds carrying egg fragments from the nest after the hatching of their chicks\u00a0multiple times but this seemed a little strange because it looked like an entire egg rather than just a\u00a0 fragment\u00a0(which I didn’t think at all likely or even\u00a0possible).\u00a0 Another thing that strikes me as unusual is the fact that this bird was several hundred feet in the air and flew a significant distance with the egg even though BNA Online says that\u00a0when curlews dispose of eggshells they fly only “several meters” from the nest before alighting to drop the shell. We watched the bird fly and then eventually land on a gravel road\u00a0where we were able to find the abandoned egg.\u00a0 Here you see it undisturbed as we found it.\u00a0 Now I’m no curlew expert but I’m going to speculate that this egg didn’t “hatch”.\u00a0 It doesn’t look like it has been pipped from the inside by the egg tooth of the chick and besides the hole in the egg simply has to…<\/p>\n