OMG, Evelyn! If you knew how many baby mockingbirds I hand fed while working at Audubon, you'd die! People would bring in baby birds all day long, and you couldn't convince them to leave them alone, so my job was to take care of them and get them prepared to be released back into the wild later on. One of the reasons we do not encourage people "rescuing" the baby birds is that there comes a time when the bird has imprinted so strongly on the parent bird, it will not take food from a person. You can cram it down their throats, but it will just sit in the crop area and not be digested. So removing them from the parent's care is often a death sentence. Now if a whole nest comes down (like during a storm) sometimes there is no recourse but to rescue them and try to feed them. And I know techniques have improved GREATLY from the days I was involved in bird rescue. So the odds might be better now. But lordy, lordy...I must have handraised at least 200 baby mockingbirds in a couple years time. Not to mention jays, grackles, thrashers, titmice, and maybe 1,000 mourning doves! (My least favorite baby birds of all time.) Anyway, your picture is a trip down memory lane for sure. Saintp, the length of time it takes an egg to hatch varies from species to species, but usually it is not very long. A week or ten days, often. I'll see if I can find out about bluejays. I don't remember. Maybe I never even knew. But the info is probably out there somewhere. Will get back to you later. Marcia

I have the same problem in Florida with my orchids. They hang in various baskets under the trees. Not only do the birds try to nest in the baskets, they love the sphagnum moss which is part of the potting mix. They also love the coir baskets, pulling chunks off the baskets which leaves big holes where all the potting mix falls out. One thing I did last year which seemed to work was to add small lava rock to the top of the potting mix. They do not like it and have left the plants alone. I removed it after nesting season and saved it for this year. I found a bunch of house wrens and finches landing in the baskets this morning and I knew it was time to get the rock out. You could probably use small gravel. Would work the same. Good luck and let us know how it goes... Jane

I had a dove nest in an epiphyllum plant I had hanging under a porch roof. Like your bird - dry and safe location. What I did to water was water v-e-r-y slowly, and not have the water stream hit the dirt by the nest (big pot, nest didn't cover the entire surface). I watered often enough that I didn't need to stand there too long, and I could get slightly different parts of the pot each time. 3 or 4 sets of doves hatched from that pot over 2 years! Luckily, being a succulent, it didn't need the copious watering that my fuchsias always have, but that IS how I handled the situation. Funny enough, that plant grew like nobody's business, and got huge, and bloomed vigorously during the dove 'tenancy'.

I agree. That is not 'rotting'......that is a drying of the foliage due to insufficient water or low humidity. Extremely common with many types of indoor ferns. Keep the soil evenly moist, never completely dry. And you can bump up the humidity in the immediate area by placing the pot in a tray filled with rocks or pea gravel and water just to under the base of the pot (don't let it sit directly in the water). Indoors, this will probably need to be topped up on a daily basis.