It’s baby bird season again here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means lots and lots of cuteness out there in the world. Unfortunately, it also means lots and lots of baby birds unnecessarily “kidnapped” by well-meaning people. My ambulance shifts the last several weeks have been dominated by baby birds, mostly perfectly healthy birds that should never have been taken in the first place.
Here’s the scene: You’re walking along and see a young bird on the ground. The parents are nowhere in sight and as you approach the young bird it does not fly away. Assuming it’s injured or orphaned you can’t bear the thought of leaving the little guy there to his/her fate, so you take it home, put it in a shoebox, feed it bread and water, and call the animal ambulance (or bring it to a vet or shelter).
Here’s the catch: Fledglings (young birds that have already grown flight feathers) often learn to fly from the ground. So once they leave the nest, they can spend several days on the ground or on low branches before they’re truly able to fly. The parents are rarely far away, even if you can’t see them, and will continue to come back and feed the little peepers, but NOT if there are humans close by. If you find a fully feathered young bird on the ground that is not injured the best thing you can do is back away and leave it where it is. If you’re uncertain of the situation, try to observe from a safe distance. You’ll likely see one or both of the parents come back within a few minutes. Once a bird is taken away from its parents, its chances of survival decrease considerably.* If the bird is injured or if you’re sure it’s orphaned (we recently got a whole nest of Blue tits in because the caller’s cat had killed both the parents :?) please don’t attempt to raise or rehabilitate it yourself. Contact a licensed rehabilitator who has the knowledge and experience to tend to the exact needs of each particular bird species.
If you’d like to know more, here’s some great information from the RSPB, and a great flowchart from PAWS for how to determine what’s best in each situation.
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On a funnier note, yesterday’s shift saw us transporting the Houdini of Hedgehogs in our ambulance. We got a call from a care home for mentally handicapped adults. The receptionist had found a hedgehog curled up on the sidewalk. The fact that the prickly little fellow was out during the day was already a sign to us that something was wrong so we went over to investigate. It was a young hedgie, but presumably old enough to be foraging on its own. It curled up like it was supposed to when I picked it up and a good sniff told us that there was likely nothing seriously wrong with the little guy. He was, however, infested with fleas (as hedgehogs quite often are) and we suspected that because of this was suffering from anemia and just needed to recuperate at the bird sanctuary (the Toevlucht that also rehabs hedgies). We took him in the cardboard box the receptionist had put him in, lined with towels, and put him in the back of the ambulance. Tucking the four corners of the flaps into each other to close the box, I put a roll of bags on top of the box to weigh down the flaps just to be sure.
As we went to pick up another bird that needed to be brought to the bird rehabbers, all’s quiet from behind us as we assume little Harry (as I now call him) is asleep in his bed of towels. But as we get closer to our destination, we start to hear scratching in the back of the vehicle and realize he’s trying to dig his way out of the box. The whole way there, what we hear is *scratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratch* then about 15 seconds of silence followed by *scratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratchscratch*. We joke that we’re going to find a loose hedgie in the back of the ambulance both knowing that there’s no way he’ll get through the thick cardboard during the short drive to the sanctuary.
Never underestimate the cunning of a hedgehog, though. When we got to the Toevlucht, I opened up the back of the ambulance and there, standing next to his cardboard box and sniffing a cat-carrier with a pigeon in it was little Houdini Hedgehog, cute as can be. Laughing, I scooped him up in a towel while my partner gave the box a good looking-over. We were right about one thing; he wasn’t able to dig through the thick cardboard during the short drive. There were no holes in the box. The little bugger (or bug-eater, actually) had somehow pushed his way through the folded, weighed down flaps of the box. The fact that he had the strength and wherewithal to do that gives me hope that a full recovery is on the cards for the little guy. Here’s hoping he’s out in the wild doing his hedgehog thing ASAP.
And since I’m always too busy to take pictures of the cuties we get on board to post here, I leave you with a somewhat related video I took a few years ago on my balcony. Get ready for some hot, young, Great tit action**:
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*Although while we’re on the subject, I’d also like to dispel the myth that once a human has touched a baby bird, it will be rejected by the parents. Most bird species don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell and will NOT reject a baby after human intervention. So if for any reason you do have to intervene – say the fledgling is in the middle of the road and need to be moved to a less dangerous spot, or is not feathered (in which case it should be returned to the nest or a surrogate nest if at all possible) – you can do so with a good conscience.
** Shameless attempt to up the google traffic to my blog. 😛
Nerdsong 