One lazy day in late summer, I sat reading in my rocking chair when I heard a “pop!” and felt a smack on the back of my head. Jumping up, I hollered, thinking my son was shooting his BB- gun too close to the house and had gotten me! Then I smelled it—that awful smell like Templeton’s dud egg in Charlotte’s Web. “If that egg breaks this barnyard will be untenable. A rotten egg is a regular stink bomb.” Sure enough, I found that a little speckled cowbird egg that the kids had carried in to sit on the shelf with our nature finds had exploded on me.

What parent, grandparents or neighbor has not had the opportunity to console a child who has come with tear-stained face and a broken egg shell in an outstretched hand? What do you say? Can you convince the child that the little birdie has hatched and not been eaten by a cat or a snake?

Yes, that is quite a good argument as most predators eat the eggs shell and all. A cowbird chick may have muscled the egg out, though, or the child may have broken the egg trying to peek into the nest.

I have always used distraction. “Well, my, oh my, what kind of bird would lay such a bright blue egg? Must be a robin!” Then it’s time to pull out the encyclopedia or a birding book and look for the identifying shape. color and size of egg to match the broken specimen.

Robin egg blue
Most of us would recognize the robin’s egg anyway. Robin egg blue is so familiar that it is a Crayola™ crayon name. The robin is a gray, black and red bird that lays a blue egg. The bluebird’s egg is white. A cardinal egg is brown-speckled. A goldfinch lays a pearl-white egg, so the clue is not a connection to the bird’s color. The color usually gives a clue though. A killdeer lays its eggs on the gravel, so it is speckled with brown on white to camouflage it.