Nature's cruelty

At the beginning of this week I noticed that a collared dove had made a nest in our small apple tree. It seemed a bit of a pathetic nest to me as it consisted of just a few twigs laid flat on top of one of the branches. I later read they only lay 1 or 2 eggs, but even so I thought it must be hard to keep a chick safe in something so fragile and easy to spot. The next couple of days I watched to see if there was any sign of an egg but in that time she had not moved out of the nest so I could not get a proper look. Yesterday afternoon I was upstairs and happened to look out of the window and saw two collared doves chasing away a magpie. I wondered if one of them was the dove that had left the nest so I went outside to see. The dove had flown back into the nest but then she flew straight out again and on inspecting the area I saw the egg on the ground smashed. I was greatly disappointed as the chick had started to develop. Either the magpie had got hold of it and dropped it or the dove itself had knocked it out of the nest while trying to chase the magpie away. I was looking forward to seeing the chick hatch and grow and have been disappointed yet again. Last year we actually had a magpie build a rather big nest in our big apple tree, but later abandoned it before anything seemed to happen.