Mystery of the Lost Egg Solved

We knew it could be true. It was just hard to accept. Eggs being accidentally buried in the nest wasn’t on our radar; it’s not something that had come up before. Still, we were fairly certain that the egg was either knocked out of the nest or buried during a frantic nest building session on May 28, when the loons were battling a continuously rising water level.

Our post-hatch nest inspection was more thorough than usual. In addition to getting GPS coordinates, collecting eggshell fragments and inspecting the general area for anything unusual, we dismantled the nest (not something we want to do on a regular basis) and… Voila!