Can anyone help me identify these eggs in my garden?

I'm in South-Central British Columbia Canada. I live right on Shuswap Lake. Today, as I was looking at my container garden out front of my house, and when I looked on the ground within a retaining area garden that I don't use, I saw four small eggs within a nest nestled in between some weeds and other debris.

Although I've seen a few birds down in that area while sitting on my bedroom balcony overlooking the area and the lake, I haven't seen any of them close to that nest.

Can anyone help me identify what type of bird these could be from? Because I don't know, I am unsure if the nest has been abandoned, or whether the bird type normally leaves a vacant, egg filled nest.

I have not touched the eggs, and don't plan to unless I can completely verify that they've been abandoned.



Because I'm an avid outdoors person, I have a library of nature books, and have found a couple of birds that might be responsible, but I won't mention them as to not taint anyone else's opinion for now.

Since this is about gardening, here's part of my little container garden I have growing out front (between the lake and my front porch). You can see the two cannabis plants there on the table. Those are my first auto flower plants I've ever grown.

Killdeer or grouse would be my best guess. Quite a few ground nesting birds in North America

Boatguy said:

Killdeer or grouse would be my best guess. Quite a few ground nesting birds in North America

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I thought it may be a grouse at first, but I haven't seen any around, and there's no evidence of any in my general area. I've been keeping my eyes open for signs of them though.

Regarding Killdeer, I've seen a couple in the area, but not close to the nesting area in question. I've situated one of my security cameras to monitor that area in hopes the bird comes back soon.

spek9 said:

I thought it may be a grouse at first, but I haven't seen any around, and there's no evidence of any in my general area. I've been keeping my eyes open for signs of them though.

Regarding Killdeer, I've seen a couple in the area, but not close to the nesting area in question. I've situated one of my security cameras to monitor that area in hopes the bird comes back soon.

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Grouse can be hard to spot. They rely on not moving for their camouflage. If you are only looking for animals that are moving......

JoeBlow5823 said:

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Yeah, I'm convinced its a grouse. Showed my wife the photo against the pic I took, and she told me "don't you remember a few days ago when you went outside to look around because you thought you saw a grouse scratching around down there?".

Sigh. I'm getting forgetful

JoeBlow5823 said:

Grouse can be hard to spot. They rely on not moving for camouflage.

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Hard to spot, easy to grab

spek9 said:

Hard to spot, easy to grab

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You can almost step on them accidentally lol dumb birds.

JoeBlow5823 said:

You can almost step on them accidentally lol dumb birds.

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I know. I have. When I lived up north, the Ruffed Grouse was as constant as moose, bears and cougars. At one edge of my property leading down to the lake, the grouse loved to nest in the grass beside a grass hill that I used to get to my boat house/launch. They'd wander around the walk/drive path. Damned birds sometimes wouldn't even move when I was driving down there on my lawn mower or even the bucket loader.

That entire path had wild strawberries on one side, and Saskatoon berries on the other, so when we were berry picking, you'd almost be kicking the damned things out of the way lol