So here’s a mystery. Last Thursday, the nest held five eggs.

This morning, there are only four.

There’s no sign of any broken egg in the nest or on the step below. There’s no hatchling hanging out with his unhatched siblings. The nest is too high for the neighbor’s cat to reach even if Cosmo were interested in eggs. I haven’t heard any strange noises, such as one might expect if a bird were trying to steal an egg.

And here’s another oddity. Mama—who spent most of the weekend on the nest—left when I opened the front door nearly three hours ago, and she’s only just come back. I can hear birds all over the yard, but no undue levels of squawking. Granted, it’s a mild day, but leaving her eggs untended for this long is unusual.

Do you suppose they’ve been reading this blog, and they think I’m planning to evict them so I can use the front door? Or maybe Hatchling Protective Services dropped by and told them they couldn’t crowd so many kids into one nest, and so they’ve moved one of the eggs to their new (bigger) nest. Or maybe they don’t like having the paparazzi snapping photos of their family.

As the King of Siam said, “Is a puzzlement.”