What to do with abandoned bird eggs

A bird moved into our house about the same time we did. She (I assume it was a she) spent a ton of time working on the above nest. We (excluding our cat) are good people and left her alone. A few weeks after the nest was completed, we stopped seeing her. We didn’t think too much of it until last weekend when I decided to take down the vacant nest. To my surprise…

There were eggs in it still!

It had been so long since the Mom was last seen that I knew the poor little guys had died. Throwing the nest away felt wrong, but that’s about all we could do in this situation. Considering our grim options, Marie decided that at the very least, I needed to take a picture of them. So here they are, all cute and seemingly full of potential. I know that’s not the reality of things, but suspension of reality is one thing nice about a photograph.

The next time you’re encountered with a situation like this, take a picture! Better yet, hire me to take it for you!

For the curious, here’s the technical details:
I placed the nest in one of our bushes, and lit it from camera left. I used the SB-900 with a full cut CTO through a Westcott Micro Apollo (mini softbox). I triggered it with a pocketwizard. Minimal post production work, contrast/vibrance, that’s about it.

Tagged as: bird, egg, picture, strobist