Thanks, Jordanwalker, for responding to my question. It makes a lot of sense that those are the Blue Jay's eggs. They seem too big to be the Cardinal's eggs and we have a lot of Blue jays here. The missing egg theory is interesting and it's kind of scary too for them to eat their own eggs/nestings! In some ways I'm not too surprised too as they're pretty aggressive birds. One Summer, they built a nest over out garden arch and three little birds hatched. The parents were very protective of them and kept sqawking at us whenever we walked under the nest. They always bully other birds including the Cardinals that regularly visit our garden. The Cardinals aren't aggressive, but they sure are brave enough to not to give up their ground easily.

They are nature's garbage men! I live near a park with mature trees that is sandwiched at the intersection of two busy roads. The turkey vultures settle in on a garage roof across from the park a block from the intersection and just have a buffet! They are magnificent.

looks like a female bobwhite quail to me...

I agree with the squirrel nest - I have a lot of them and I've seen a squirrel running between them: A squirrel bustled up and down the trees at sunrise - it looked like it was checking the various nests to see who was awake and up. The trees are on top of the coastal bank overlooking Cape Cod Bay. Claire