Not All The Eggs Hatch

So, I thought I'd take this time to answer some mail that I received a while back:

Hi Dan,

I saw that you are running low on blog topics. I have a couple thoughts:

Not all the eggs hatch. What happens to them?

I enjoy your observations,

Jill - one of the bird counters

Well Jill, thanks for writing.  I'm glad you brought that topic up.   I've been meaning to shed some light on this story for a long time.  See, there are many reasons for an egg not to hatch.  It might be un-fertilized from the get go.  It might get cold at some point during the incubation period.  Maybe it gets a tiny crack in the shell and can't survive.  Whatever the case, we are left with thousands of eggs that do not turn into chicks.  This is a very valuable resource to island residents, since there are no chickens allowed on Midway.  For the most part, this is what happens to them:

Not all of them are fried over medium like these.  Some of them become omelettes or go into fresh-baked cakes.  You get the idea.

On a side note, this is mostly what happened last night.  Sports bra.