The mother bird has been sitting on her eggs in the nest.
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usage
孵 is most commonly seen in the compound 孵化 (fūhuà, to incubate/hatch) and the phrase 孵蛋 (fū dàn, to sit on eggs). As a standalone verb, 孵 refers specifically to the incubation of eggs by birds or artificially.
Left 卵 — pictograph of fish or insect eggs laid in pairs, with two dots inside the curved walls picturing the embryos. Supplies the meaning: 孵 is the act of warming eggs until they hatch. Indexed under Kangxi #39 子 (zǐ) by tradition, taken from the child buried inside 孚 on the right.
Right side 孚 supplies the sound — fú drifting to fū through a tone change. A perfect semantic match rides along: 孚 itself pictures a claw 爪 over a child 子, depicting a mother bird's foot on her nestlings. So 孵 stacks two brooding pictures — egg and mother-over-chick — into one verb for hatching.
Filed under radical 子 (zǐ, #39) by convention. 子 is not a separate component in 孵, so no strokes are highlighted.
