It’s a spring rite of passage, finding the discarded shells of hatching robins below the towering maple tree. The beauty of the color stops me in my tracks and I am compelled to examine the shell fragment, imagining the chick that triumphantly emerged, and soaking in that stunning blue.
I know that a chick hatched from this egg because it had the familiar look of the successful post-hatch shell: vessels and inner membrane dry, shell neatly cracked nearly in half. No smears of yolk or blood to indicate that something had eaten the egg’s contents. Conditions were just right for this robin’s emergence.
I’ve found cast-off shells under this very tree for several years, and each time, it feels like a small gift. Someone is beginning a life…may it be a good one.