My au pair has just come home with a baby blue tit she 'rescued'. I told her to go and put it back in a safe place near where she found it as the mother would probably be looking for it. After several hours we went back to check on it only to find that it was still where we'd left it with no other birds around that may have been it's mother.
Baby blue tit can fly but not very far - my concern is what do we do with him?? How can we feed/water it and with what?? Please help as I really don't want it to come to any harm - was thinking of taking it to the vets maybe??
Hi ladybird,
I know you are trying to do the best thing for the fledgling, but again I can only repeat what I have said to others that have posted similar requests of help.
The best advice is to leave them alone, really there is nothing else to say.
Human intervention reduces the long term survival.
Fledglings should be left where they are, in the care of their parents. Removal of a fledgling from the wild will cut its chances of long-term survival to a small fraction, and should only be done as a very last resort.
If the bird is on a busy path or road or other potentially dangerous, exposed location, it makes sense to pick it up and move it a short distance to a safer place. Make sure you put it down within hearing reach of where it was found so its parents can find it.
Handling a young bird does not cause its parents to abandon it. Birds have a poor sense of smell and do not respond to human smell in the same way as mammals.
It can be tempting to try to ‘rescue’ a baby bird apparently in trouble. Here are some things to remember:
The RSPB does not run bird hospitals or a rescue service.
Regards Buzzard
Nature Is Amazing - Let Us Keep It That Way
Hi ladybird
Buzzard is right. You should never intervene or remove a wild bird from where you found it. You did the right thing returning it to where it was found. I know it looked like it was alone when you went back, but the parents were probably around, just a bit spooked by the goings on.
Hopefully it is now reunited with parents, but, if not, I'm afraid nature can be very cruel as well as wonderful.
Thanks for asking for advice. You always get the best on this forum.
Pipit
Many years ago, we lived in a Lincolnshire cottage with a very old pantile roof that had many gaps that allowed birds to get in and nest. It was sparrows and starlings that took up residence in considerable numbers and it was a noisy time with much squabbling and activity, especially during the summers. Visitors who stayed over complained about the birds clumping about in boots from early morning. But we liked them - it was our first house and the birds were there first and part of the cottage's charm.
One day, I came home after a couple of days away on business and my wife said she was worried about the sound of scratching from an interior cavity wall. Could it be rats? It had been going on since the previous day although not as much as earlier. I climbed into the attic and could see down into the wall. At the bottom I there were several baby starlings, but only one still alive. Clearly their nest had collapsed and fallen out of the rafters into the cavity wall.
I fished the live one out - it just had early downy feathers so was very young - and disposed of the corpses. We named it Sammy (Starling) and set about feeding it. It was a lively, intelligent and inquisitive little bird and it thrived on worms, grubs and insects. Sammy grew and developed quickly and didn't like being confined to the nest box we made, so sat on the furniture or on anyone’s shoulder (it was a messy time). I was a keen gardener and Sammy would hop along picking up grubs and bugs as I did the weeding.
I remember his first flight, from my wife's shoulder to me, when I bent down to do some weeding. We were delighted. He soon became more independent and we could hear yelps from neighbours who, while working in their garden, were set upon by a young starling looking for grubs.
For a while, he came back in the evenings to spend the night in his nest box, but after a couple of weeks he would stay out all night, and only occasionally hop down from the roof to "help" with the gardening. But it was only a week or two later that we got the news that a young starling had been found dead in a neighbour's garden, apparently a present from their cat . We never saw Sammy again.
So, although we had rescued the starling and successfully raised it to apparent independence, we had failed to give him the survival skills he really needed - the fear of people, cats and other predators. In truth, Sammy was as doomed as his siblings when his nest collapsed into the cavity wall.
We have had this discussion before and I know every wildlife organisation, wildlife site, TV programme etc. will give the same advice as Buzzard. He is absolutely right of course. I am quite surprised that with all the publicity, people still pick up baby birds which are in no immediate danger.
However, there are always exceptions and I think Falcojocks story is one. A sad story but Sammy had 4 weeks or more of life that the others didn't have, that surely means something. I do agree that hand-reared chicks must be more vunerable to predators but hundreds (thousands??) of birds raised by their parents are also killed by cats. I can only speak for myself, and although I do take your very well-made point Falcojock, I know I could not have turned away and left that chick to die. I would have fed it, kept it warm and then probably called the RSPCA. :-)
Kind regards Jane.