MOURNING DOVES: nest fell, egg destroyed (1 Viewer)

A pair of mourning doves built their nest in a palm tree that overhangs my balcony about 16-17 days ago.

They have been religiously taking turns, day and night, sitting on the nest.
The nest has never been left unattended as far as I have been able to tell.

This morning one of the adults was sitting there, as normal, presumably incubating.

This afternoon, I peered out the window and saw no parent, no nest, no nothing.

I went outside to find one little egg, broken. Mostly blood and liquid. A tiny fetus, hardly formed...and this is after 16 days.

Shouldn't it have been further along by now? (The nest was further away caught in a bush, and empty.)

Do you think that the parent(s) "knew" that this egg was not "viable" and therefore decided to give up and abandon the nest? It's a windy day here, so once there was no adult on the nest I'm thinking that's why it got blown down to the ground and with it the non-viable egg.

I feel heartbroken, having watched the parents working so hard these past 2 weeks to incubate their egg(s).

I only found one egg, although I know they usually have 2.

Right now, one of the parents has just shown up for the night-time "shift" and is sitting on an adjacent branch near where the nest used to be.

Anyone have any other idea of why this may have happened?

it might have just blown out of the tree by the wind. other than that i dont think the doves would know the chick was sick/abnormal untill it had actually hatched then they would have kicked it out of the nest. other than that i have no idea why that would happen. theres a robin egg on my neighbors lawn but theres no nest in tree above and there hasnt been robins here or nesting yet so there are some unexplained things in the bird world.

Thanks, amkid.....The reason I'm so puzzled is that the parents never seem to have left that nest unattended at ALL...therefore I thought it so unlikely that the wind would have been able to get at it.

Maybe another bird tried to intrude and caused the parent to temporarily fly off?

Gosh, I feel so upset. Kind of surprised at how attached I got to these cuties.