Wayward Egg

[clever...@gmail.com]

This was a curious find – a very large egg, almost certainly trumpeter swan, a good 35 meters up a forested, very brushy slope from the nearest nesting habitat - where we don’t know there to be a nest.

 

 

There is a pair of trumpeter swans in the area, and I heard them very close to this location yesterday. Our dog found the egg and we believe put the large hole in it, although there may have been a smaller one before he tried to pick it up. But how did it get there? A predator is the only explanation I can think of, but it’s hard for me to imagine one - likely a bear or wolf - going to the trouble of carrying it that far and not eating it.

 

Steve Wilson

Isabella

 

 

 

[Mary M White / Charles R Neil]

Amazing!

A couple years ago I attached a photo to an EFN post of a raven flying off with a large chicken egg in its beak stolen from my neighbor's chicken coop. So, for a moment I thought that maybe a raven stole that trumpeter swan’s egg until it proved too big and heavy for the raven’s gape and dropped it at low altitude.  

The internet shows my thought to be ridiculous: 

A jumbo chicken egg is about 2 3/4” by 1 1/2”. That’s about half the length and width of a trumpeter swan egg which is about 4.5” x 2.9”.  

Also, a trupeter’s egg weighs about 11.3 oz, more than 5 times that of a 2 oz chicken egg!

So, I can’t think of any north woods four legged creature other than bear, wolf, coyote or fox that could open its jaw wide enough to carry an egg that big and heavy from a shoreline to its cubs or pups in the woods. 

Your dog is an oologist!  Chuck Neil, Embarrass

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