If a bird’s nest chances before you on the road, on any tree or on the ground, with chicks or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.
English: “If it chances” — excluding [a nest that is already] found / prepared.
On the daf / in context: The language of chance occurrence limits the mitzvah to a nest that one happens upon, not one that is deliberately sought or already owned.
Type of Learning
Limiting derash on “ki yikkare.”
What Is Learned
The mitzvah of sending away the mother bird applies to a nest that one chances upon, not to one that is already in one’s possession or deliberately prepared.