Martin eating a Martin egg!

[jdladybird]

Has any other Landlord witnessed a Martin eating a Martin egg??
This evening I was what I think was a SY male with a egg shell in its beak on a porch of my house. At first I thought it was just eating a shell of a recently hatched chick. That was until i saw the innards of the egg come out! (was using a spotting scope to observe)

My next nest check is a couple days away but will be curious to see which compartment is missing an egg! It was not the compartment where the Martin ate the egg, that one only has young.

Is this "normal" behavior?

[flyin-lowe]

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for SY male martins to destroy eggs and sometimes pull babies out of the nest of other martins. Some never act out and others do a lot of damage.

[jdladybird]

I guess I have a bad SY male. I have had a couple dead young that were just a couple of days old lying close to the entrance holes. I thought that perhaps it was the mother trying to remove a chick that did not survive.

After fighting sterling sand sparrows I can't believe that I have to worry about SY males!

[flyin-lowe]

It is part of it. Fortunately I have never seen it happen but I am sure it has. Some people have it worse then others.

[jdladybird]

As a follow up on this incident, when I did my nest check there were 9 eggs gone!

Since I have predator guards on my houses, I can only assume that it was the Martins themselves.