Egg I.D. please

[witham]

This week I have found the remains of a small turquoise (?) pretty blue egg under our old holly tree where the gold finches usually roost, is it one of theirs. It's a new one as wasn't there last week. There is a blue tit box on a nearby silver birch tree and they have been taking nesting material in for a while but their eggs are white if I remember from the camera box last year

[Dogghound]

Goldfinch eggs are a really pale washed out blue with brown flecks. It doesnt sound like a tit egg, these are white. Blackbirds are a darker blue with lots of brown flecks, Mistle thrush are similar but with less flecking and song thrush have virtually no flecking at all.

Can you get a photo?

[witham]

Thanks for your reply, I think it's plain although hard to see as its broken into small pieces but I'll do a fleck test with my specs on to double check

[Dogghound]

Sounds like starling if there are no flecks although these usually lay eggs around late April.

[valleyforge]

If the eggshell was quite small and uniformly greenish-blue, then the most likely candidate (for typical garden birds) would be the Dunnock.

[Dogghound]

Good point, totally forgot about dunnocks

[RobinP]

* deleted *

[witham]

Done the fleck test and can report that the shell is fleckless, we do have a few Dunnocks that come to the ground feeding area but they usually nest in the Hawthorn or Lleylandii further away but there is a large Lawsons Cypress in the area but the shell would still have had to have been dropped either purposely as they do when cleaning the nest or accidentally if it was broken and stuck to their feathers.

[valleyforge]

They will usually discard the egg shells some distance from the nest, to minimize risk of its discovery.

For subsequent broods however, especially if you live in a soft-water area, where free (or in-solution) calcium is in short supply, the birds may well ingest the calcite (calcium carbonate) from the egg shells to supplement the calcium lost in egg production.

[rossy]

if the egg is deep blue , dunnock, if its pale blue it would be starling,dunnocks eggs are a little larger in size to that of a blue tit, as you have seen those you may have a good idea, rossy.