Yes, it's illegal as heck- AND, artificial incubation takes time, turning and moisture. The egg needs to be turned during incubation, as well as given moisture regularly. Not knowing which species you have doesn't help because when it does hatch, you won't know what to feed it, if it's altricial (helpless). If it's a precocial species (eyes open, fluffy and nearly walking, such as the case with ducklings, goslings, killdeer, quail and others), then getting it grains and insects of a natural quality will be difficult. In a desert environment, I wouldn't guess turtle. I might go for tortoise, but the egg isn't round, is it? Most turtle and tortoise eggs are round and soft like leather. Your best bet is, as everyone has said, to leave it alone. It's so hard not to want to help; it's an innate tendency within all of us to want to help. (Personally I think God put that within us so we wouldn't abandon our young or someone who is hurt). It's so strong in some of us that we become animal rescuers. In my case, I was a wildlife rehabilitator from 1986-2004. So I will repeat: hatching eggs artificially is extremely difficult, even when we *know* the species, without the proper incubator, without knowing the species, and without the right baby bird foods on hand. . . . Feather

Well If you have ever seen TRES fledge theres no way a baby Blue will make it. I would almost opt to candle the eggs and if there is little to nothing there get rid of them. Is it possable to tell the difference between babies at hatching time? I would want to put them in the Blues nest but that could cause problems too. Lets think babies not eggs here. No way a blue can survive with a TRES Mom, overloading a Blue or having babies hatch days before her clutch could result in dead babies. Yikes this is one for Bet, Malinda or Cornell. Im still thinkin destroy the eggs so no babies ever suffer.

Boy can I relate to your frustration. Those wrens ruin so many nests. Sorry about your Blues being chased out. Those wrens are just awful.

Greetings, rivkadr, I expect them to be going up soon - driven by the higher interest rates that the gov't. will have to pay in order to entice the bankers of the world to lend them more money - U.S. folks can't do it: they're too deep in debt, themselves. Did you notice that the U.S. gov't.'s main banker, the gov't. of China, worried aloud to Hillary on her visit there the other day as to whether the U.S. money management system was in good enough order? Considering their huge debt, and the massive deficits, year after year, which were bad enough dealing with the bottomless pit called Iraq (plus Afghanistan), before the elephantine bailouts of the parts of your financial industry that are, " ... too big to fail" (rather than the regional banks, who were much more prudent, and deserved the gov't. support a heck of a lot more ... but the gov't. bailout guys are the former bosses of those big financials). Also ... they're printing gobs of new money. I remember, just after Dad gave me my first bike at age 9, while riding it down the gravel road beside our farm, thinking what a great thing that it would be if all of that gravel turned to gold ... ... but it didn't take me long to realize that, were it to become gold to me, it would have become so for everyone else, as well ... ... and soon it would take more than a pocketful to buy a loaf of bread. Given those circumstances, if you had control of massive amounts of assets in foreign parts and the U.S. gov't. came, cap in hand, with the rounded head part on the bottom and the hole on top, awaiting the piling in of new money ... ... what answer would you give? Can you imagine the screaming, if interest rates in the U.S. were to, say double, in the next year or so? Have you noted the howling that people have done, here, when the interest rates on their credit card increased substantially? I began selling mutual funds in 1984 (which continued for just a year - then I became personal financial advisor, selling no financial products: no conflict of interest). At that time, some folks, mainly seniors, happily told me how they'd made 19% on Canada Savings Bonds, a couple of years earlier. When I asked them how they liked making about $2,000. - 3,000. on $100,000. or so invested, they laughed at me. Yes, they had a nice looking amount to show in their bank book ... but interest income is taxed at top rate, and if they were in 25% tax rate, that'd take their pre-tax $19,000. down to about $14,500. of after-tax income. When the number of dollars that you have invested is guaranteed by the bank not to shrink, there's another guarantee that they never mention: the number of dollars won't grow, either, apart from the rent on the money. However, each of those dollars will buy less next year than this year, every year since about 1937. Did they know what the rate of inflation was, in that year? Few did: it was about 12% ... so they needed to add $12,000. or so of that interest earning to the principal, in order to maintain purchasing power. Income tax erodes most of your current income ... and inflation has an deleterious effect upon your assets. Which is why I say that I don't like earning interest ... plus, dividends on Canadian stocks are taxed at a much lower rate. Bank books don't tell the whole story! Good wishes for using your assets wisely, rivkadr. ole joyful