A blackbird made a nest in our garden. The mother blackbird was removed from the nest overnight by a predator, leaving 5 eggs.
After seeking advice from a wildlife rehab facebook group. I took the eggs to someone who has an incubator to hatch and look after them.
I am not sure this was the right thing to do in hindsight.
Can anyone advise? (for future reference)
Sad as the situation was it is never right to remove eggs from wild birds nests to hatch in captivity unless you have any sort of licence to do so! Baby birds will be extremely difficult to rear for return to the wild, there is a severe danger of them imprinting on humans and there will be no parent to feed them whilst showing them how to forage for their own food ... it is always better to leave things to nature no matter how hard it is!
2013 photos & vids here
eff37 on Flickr
Thank you for the reply.
If the rehab group is based in the UK, the site should be flagged as it is advocating breaking the law. In 21st Century UK, people offering guesses and opinion as advice is rampant. Often doesn't matter one way or another, but guessing like they are doing, or opinions that they are sharing really aren't helpful. As Wendy says, 'then what?' with regard to once hatched, if they do.
Mostly the group is concerned with ailing seagulls and pigeons, or people asking about fledglings and being told to leave them alone for parents to feed etc...I don't think it's a bad group in general. I will update my post on there so that at least other people know not to try to hatch wild bird eggs even in this sort of unusual situation
Thank you