Chicken and pigeons

Robert and I have been in our new apartment just over a month now, and for the past two or three weeks, we've had a pair of pigeons attempting to nest in our juliette balcony. I say "attempting" because these two pigeons are extraordinarily bad parents. They built a nest, and the female laid two eggs (much to our dismay). Then all of the nesting material fell through the grate and/or off the side. Then one of the eggs apparently fell over the side. Then, last week, Robert noticed that the remaining egg is broken. But none of these misfortunes have prevented the pigeons from sitting on the egg, and the male(? - I'm not 100% sure which is which) pigeon keeps on trying to bring twigs to reconstitute the nest. This has been totally unsuccessful, because he's just a little too fat to comfortably fit between the bars of the balcony. He flies up with a twig in his beak, tries to come through the bars, flaps his wings a few times, drops the twig to the ground, and flies off for another one. Every time. It would be very amusing, except that the pigeons are kind of noisy and gross and generally annoying.

In other birdie news, my needle-felted chicken from a previous post is finally framed and hanging up in our kitchen: