Nest With Eggs Emoji

A bird's nest made of woven twigs with two or three eggs inside. It looks simple, but this emoji sits at the intersection of three metaphors so deeply embedded in English that most people don't even notice them.

First: the "nest egg", meaning savings. The idiom dates to the 14th century, when farmers placed a real or fake egg in a hen's nest to encourage her to lay more. A small investment that encourages growth. By the 1700s, it meant retirement savings.

Second: the "nesting instinct," the biological urge to prepare a home before a baby arrives. It peaks in the third trimester, driven by estrogen and oxytocin. Expectant parents use 🪺 in pregnancy announcements, nursery reveals, and baby shower content.

Third: "empty nest syndrome," the grief parents feel when their children leave home. Unicode acknowledged this explicitly by adding both 🪺 Nest with Eggs and 🪹 Empty Nest in the same release (Unicode 14.0, 2021). They're a before-and-after pair.

Beyond the metaphors, eggs in nests carry ancient symbolic weight. The cosmic egg appears in Hindu (Brahmanda), Finnish (Kalevala), Greek Orphic, Egyptian, and Chinese creation myths. The egg-as-origin-of-the-world is one of humanity's most universal ideas.

🪺 gets pulled in several directions depending on who's using it.

Expectant parents use it in pregnancy announcements and gender reveals, often paired with 🤰 or 👶. "Our little nest is growing 🪺" is a common caption format. The nesting instinct is real: that urge to deep-clean, organize, and prepare a space for a baby has biological roots in hormonal changes during the third trimester.

Financial content creators use it for nest egg discussions. "Building my 🪺 one paycheck at a time" shows up in personal finance TikTok and investment communities. The financial metaphor is so ingrained that some people use 🪺 in their bios to signal they're focused on saving.

Nature and birdwatching communities use it literally for actual nests. Spring content, wildlife photography, and birding accounts deploy it during nesting season.

And increasingly, parents of college-age kids use the contrast between 🪺 and 🪹 to mark the transition from full house to empty nest. The pair works as a visual shorthand for a major life stage that doesn't have many other emoji options.

Nests are among nature's most impressive engineering projects. A weaver bird tears long strips from grass and palm leaves, then knots, loops, and tucks 3,437 individual "threads" into an intricate hanging structure with a downward-pointing entrance tunnel that deters predators. Sociable weavers build communal apartment complexes up to 7 meters across that house 100+ birds and can last decades. Bowerbirds construct elaborate display structures decorated with colorful found objects, arranged with a sophistication that borders on art.

But nests aren't always about parenting. The common cuckoo is a brood parasite: the female lays her egg in another bird's nest, mimicking the host's egg color. When the cuckoo chick hatches (often first), it pushes the host's eggs out of the nest, commandeering all parental care. It's one of nature's most ruthless survival strategies.

Humans have their own complicated nest relationships. Bird's nest soup, made from the solidified saliva of cave swiftlets, has been a Chinese delicacy for over 400 years. At up to $4,300 per pound, it's among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans. The demand has pushed some swiftlet populations toward endangerment.

And the egg itself carries creation mythology. The cosmic egg motif, where the universe hatches from a primordial egg, appears independently in Hindu scripture (the Brahmanda, or "Brahma's egg"), the Finnish Kalevala (where a waterbird's egg hatches into the world on the goddess Ilmatar's knee), Greek Orphic tradition (where the deity Phanes emerges from a silver egg), and ancient Egyptian creation stories. Decorated eggs as symbols of rebirth date back 5,000 years to Sumerian and Egyptian graves, long before Easter adopted the tradition.

Approved in Unicode 14.0 (2021) as U+1FABAU+1FABA NEST WITH EGGS. Proposed (L2/20-217) by Christian Krenek of Emojination, the grassroots organization that has successfully proposed dozens of emojis. Added alongside 🪹 Empty Nest (U+1FAB9U+1FAB9) in the same release, creating an intentional pair. First appeared on Apple devices with iOS 15.4 in March 2022.

1. 2020Christian Krenek of Emojination submits nest emoji proposal (L2/20-217)↗
2. 2021Approved in Unicode 14.0. Both 🪺 Nest with Eggs and 🪹 Empty Nest added simultaneously↗
3. 2022First appears on Apple iOS 15.4 (March 2022) and Google Android 12L↗

The nest-and-eggs image reads differently across cultures, mostly because of what the eggs represent.

In Western cultures, the dominant associations are familial: pregnancy, children, home-making, savings. The "nest egg" financial metaphor is English-specific but widely understood. Easter eggs draw from a pre-Christian fertility tradition that predates chocolate by millennia: decorated ostrich eggs appear in Sumerian graves from 3000 BCE.

In Chinese culture, eggs carry fertility symbolism (red-dyed eggs at birth celebrations) but the "nest" specifically evokes bird's nest soup, a luxury dish associated with health and status. A nest emoji in a Chinese context might read as food rather than family.

In Persian culture, decorated eggs (haft-sin eggs) are central to Nowruz, the spring new year celebration. The egg on the haft-sin table represents fertility and new life at the equinox.

The brand name "Nest" (as in Google Nest) leverages the home-and-safety associations. Tony Fadell chose the name because a nest is where you feel safest, and a smart thermostat protects your home environment.

• •A weaver bird nest contains approximately 3,437 individually woven grass "threads." Male weavers orient the entrance tube away from prevailing winds. Females inspect nests and reject poorly built ones, making weavers one of the few species where architectural skill is a mating criterion.
• •Bird's nest soup, made from cave swiftlet saliva nests, costs up to $4,300 per pound. It's been a Chinese delicacy for over 400 years and has driven some swiftlet populations toward endangerment.
• •The common cuckoo lays eggs that mimic the color of its host's eggs so precisely that individual female cuckoos specialize in a single host species, with mimicry genes passed exclusively through the maternal line.
• •Decorated ostrich eggs have been found in Sumerian and Egyptian graves dating back 5,000 years, predating the Easter egg tradition by millennia. Eggs have symbolized rebirth and fertility since before written history.
• •Google's smart home brand "Nest" was named by co-founder Tony Fadell because a nest represents safety, warmth, and home. Google acquired Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in 2014.

• •Some people read 🪺 as purely a nature/bird emoji and miss the pregnancy or financial connotations. If you're using it for a pregnancy announcement, pair it with 🤰 or 👶 to make the meaning clear.
• •The difference between 🪺 (nest with eggs) and 🪹 (empty nest) is subtle at emoji size. Some users confuse them. If the eggs-vs-empty distinction matters to your message, mention it in text.

• •Google's smart home brand Nest (thermostats, cameras, speakers) was founded by former Apple engineer Tony Fadell in 2010 and acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014. The name was chosen because a nest represents warmth, safety, and home.
• •One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) (Ken Kesey, 1962; film 1975) uses "nest" as a metaphor for an oppressive institution. The title references brood parasitism: the cuckoo that invades another bird's nest.
• •The concept of the cosmic egg has inspired sci-fi and fantasy, from Tolkien's Ainulindalë to the Marvel Celestial egg inside Earth in Eternals (2021).
• •Fabergé eggs, the jeweled eggs created for Russian tsars beginning in 1885, transformed the egg-in-nest motif into the most expensive decorative art objects ever made. The original 50 Imperial eggs are worth tens of millions each.

• •The codepoint is U+1FABAU+1FABA. In JavaScript: '\u{1FABA}''\u{1FABA}'. Part of the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block.
• •Paired with U+1FAB9U+1FAB9 (Empty Nest) in Unicode 14.0. Consider offering both variants in bird/nature emoji pickers or parenting-themed UI.
• •Platform support: Apple iOS 15.4+, Android 12L+. Good cross-platform coverage since 2022.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.