You can't clone a bird because birds are extinct and replaced by government built robotic drones so people don't get panicked over the extinction of birds. can neither confirm or deny this as he is a government built robotic drone and he has been programmed to keep this an open secret.

And since birds are essentially descended from dinosaurs, probably won't clone dinos. Sad news....

There has been success in growing birds in plastic see-through artificial 'egg shells', basically cups that hold the yoke. They use antibiotics and other measures as well as temperature and moisture controls.

With that solved in practice, locating the nucleus is probably just a matter of technique and methodology. Dye based (fluorescence) is one possibility. High contrast imaging, point tracking, automated microscopy, and and an agitator to move the yoke around in the search process (without damaging it or physically handling it) would likely solve the problem of locating the nucleus.

These are trivial ideas.

Article is probably just a disguised advertisement for the tech the piece discusses. Thats why they're not going with the more straightforward options.

Also I see of no reason why microfluidics couldn't be used to establish a testbed platform for producing spermcells for various species as a sort of "artificial gonads".

The yolk is basically a bird embryo's packed lunch from mom, providing it with all the nutrients it needs to eventually grow into a baby bird ready to hatch. The arrangement is an efficient one, but it also presents two major issues for scientists trying to clone a bird. First, the yolk's size prevents it from fitting under a microscope to conduct the necessary work. And second, even if scientists could inspect the yolk on a microscopic level, finding that tiny nucleus floating somewhere in the yolk is extremely challenging. Novak has described the process as akin to "looking for a white marble in a pool of milk."

Another issue with eggs is that once the yolk leaves the ovary, it is always on the move. During the typical cloning process with a mammal, researchers can just stick the embryo in a surrogate mother’s uterus and let it grow. Birds have no such incubation chamber. After the yolk forms, it’s dropped into something called the oviduct, where it tumbles down an assembly line that coats it with first the egg white, and then the shell membrane. There is no uterus equivalent in which to stick a bird clone embryo.

great read