It all started 25 minutes before I was expecting my first piano student of the afternoon.
Miss B went out to get the mail and she came running inside and said I HAD to see what was on the sidewalk.
I know we have many birds in our front and side yard. My husband just cleared the beginnings of a bird nest out of the garage last week. When I take the trash out I do so at my own risk because there are some very protective Cardinals in a bush by the trash can!
Apparently there was a nest in our Japanese Maple and a couple of the eggs had been blown onto our sidewalk.
{ We are assuming this is the egg of a House Finch, but if you are a bird expert maybe you can help? I rely a lot on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for this stuff, since I am bird illiterate. }
Of course, my daughter couldn't wait until my lessons were over for the dissection. She immediately put the egg on a paper towel to inspect .... it was already cracked on one side, so I felt safe that she wouldn't be hurting a potential baby bird.
This mom learned a lesson: ALWAYS KEEP RUBBER GLOVES IN THE HOUSE!
Since we didn't have any (I usually do keep them in the house, really), my smart girl put Ziploc bags on her hands! Daddy pulled out his sharpest little screwdriver and we let her go to town.
GMan would have NO PART of this. He claimed it was gross and stayed inside.
I won't share the really close up shots (she was totally intrigued), but it just excited her to no end that what she was seeing inside the egg matched what we had been learning about in Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.
Do you remember how (before our break?) we had been spending a lot of time learning about birds?
To refresh our memories, we looked at this diagram. Yep, everything matched. I love it that she won't take a textbook's word for it - she needed to find out for herself!
Good thing two of my piano students are homeschoolers.... they totally understood why there was a child dissecting a bird egg sitting in the middle of my driveway when they dropped their darlings off for a lesson!
Side note:
*If you're interested in something cool, check out this webcam of a Red-Tailed Hawk at Cornell... the eggs should hatch the week of April 13 - we'll be watching to see if we can witness this!
Linking with Ticia for Science Sunday:
