First off, the bird in question is an English house sparrow so the local wildlife rehab places aren’t interested in it since it’s not native to Illinois. Likewise, laws against possessing songbirds don’t apply to it since they exempt English sparrows. To grab from a random Illinois forestry site:
With that out of the way, my son was out shoveling when he saw a bird fall out of the sky while flying and into the snow where it was unable to take flight again. I scooped it up and have it in a cardboard box, intending to let it rest in the dark for a few hours before taking it outside and seeing if it can manage itself from there. Supposing it can’t, does anyone have any age advice on how to proceed? I’m not even sure exactly what’s wrong with it since it’s too busy being afraid of me to act in any normal bird fashion and tell if it’s favoring a wing or something.
Sites I looked at say not to attempt to feed it or give it water but, if I need to keep it over night, how long can it go without eating? I have some birdseed for a feeder outside but haven’t tried giving it anything since my current plan is to leave it alone as much as possible.
I’d half like to set it outside, make a sign of the cross over it and wish it well but now I have a ten year old looking at me to be St. Francis of Assisi. I should call my mom… she’d love to hear about this after all the wildlife I brought home as a kid.
If quiet and a warm place to be overnight aren’t enough to fix whatever is wrong with it, then you aren’t likely to be able to do anything significant at all, even if you had a bunch of tools and knowledge at your disposal. You can try placing a small dish of water and seed next to it, but don’t try force-feeding it.
These little guys are so good at hiding their symptoms, they won’t seem sick at all until they literally have no reserves left. If this guy dropped out of the sky, whatever is wrong with him is probably already in the advanced stages.
While Pullet is probably right, if the bird is able to recover, he or she will need food.
Unfortunately most sites on the Internet seem to concern themselves with feeding baby birds. Here’s a little bit of info on what to feed that includes adult sparrows.
Warmth is the key. A partly-covered box with a nest of rags/washcloths. A heating pad under half the box might help (so that the bird can move toward or away from the heat as needed).
A dark warm dry safe place with access to a dish of water and some seeds / scrambled eggs sounds best.
Leave the bird alone as much as you can, don’t badger him/her.
Prognosis is not good – you are allowing the bird a chance, that’s all.
Well, it’s in a box with an old flannel sheet (I read not to use towels as they can snag in the terrycloth and sprain/break a foot) and I put a small dish of seed and a small dish of water in there. Aside from that, I’m keeping the box covered and leaving it alone for the night. No heating pad available but the room is warm and he’s on the sheet so he should be comfortable, given the circumstances.
I know it’s a long shot but, hey, you gotta do what’s right. If it doesn’t make it, at least it died warm and not covered in 4" of snow in the back yard. I’ll be checking the thread in case someone else has something helpful and I’ll update in the morning.
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. – Luke 12:16
Jophiel, I have no concrete advice for you, but as someone who has tried to help, among other creatures, butterflies and praying mantises, I wanted to put in a word of support. I keep thinking of those Calvin & Hobbes strips where Calvin finds a sick baby raccoon which he of course wants his mother to try to save, and his mother feels so helpless she is having a conversation with Hobbes (a stuffed cat) over the issue.
I checked an old book called Care Of The Wild, Feathered, And Furred by Mae Hickman and Maxine Guy, but I couldn’t really find any relevant information. The book has a copyright of 1973, and there have been quite a few new bird diseases since then. Anyway, the book mainly deals with injuries and poisonings, and it’s hard to say what exactly caused your bird to fall from the sky. (I might add, the instructions for dealing with injuries are not for the faint-hearted…just how handy are you with a sterilized needle and thread?)
Well, the bird’s still with us and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but it can’t fly. I keeps holding its head turned to the far left and moving in circles which makes me think either its wing is hurt or something with its neck (although it can hop about so I don’t think its neck it outright broken).
We have to leave for work and school so the bird went back into the box for the time being.
I would suggest calling multiple rehabers (if possible). The “no starlings etc” rule is common with some, but not all rehabers. A friend of mine was part of a wildlife rehabilitation group and they eventually disbanded over disagreement on this exact issue.
Have you considered that by rescuing this injured bird that you are depriving some other member of the wildlife community (a skunk, fox, or other small predator) of a meal that it might need to survive this winter?
Nope and I can’t say I’m too worried either. I’ll tell you what though, I’ll flip a hot dog into the yard and my local skunk can snack on that instead. More likely, if it provided a meal for anything, it would have been for that orange tabby that keeps cutting through my property. He can eat Meow Mix.
Calling centers and looking them up online yesterday was fruitless. Either they don’t take songbirds (only interested in mammals & raptors) or else they refuse it under the “non-native” rule. In fact, reading around on the web shows a pretty harsh anti-sparrow bias and I can understand it academically since they’re aggressive to other birds, compete for nesting & food, etc but to us it’s just a hurt bird. Little bird face, little bird wings, makes little bird noises.
My son says his sitter’s neighbor “rescues animals” so I said we can find out about that today. I’m not sure he’s accurate (maybe she takes in retired greyhounds for all I know) but we’ll find out. Otherwise, I guess it’s camping out with us for the time being.
I see you have discovered the anti-sparrow bias; perhaps this would be a good time for you and your son to learn why it is so prominent.
You have been checking with people who are engaged in wildlife preservation and those very people are unwilling to assist in your current quest. There are good reasons endangered native birds are protected and sparrows are not.
A good place to learn might be a local purple martin organization. Purple martins are now entirely dependent on humans to provide their nesting space; their natural nesting places have all been taken over by English sparrows and starlings.
In my opinion, I think it’s a wondeful lesson to show your son—Compassion for a hurt living creature is never a bad thing, even of the outcome is simply a warm, comfortable place for the little bird to die in.
I had a parrot who lived into old age (for his species) and suffered a stroke. He had movement problems for several weeks afterward. It could have suffered a head injury, but the “fall out of the sky” thing makes me think maybe a stroke.
Let’s be honest, there’s no way to know, is there?
All you can do is give is a safe hideaway, warmth, food, and water.
If the bird survives and continues to have movement problems then releasing it would be a death sentence. My pet bird lived (counts on fingers) three years after his stroke, and while he learned to fly again he certainly didn’t do it as well as before. You might wind up with a handicapped bird, in which case you’ll need a roomy cage as well as food and water. If you keep it captive do NOT feed it wild bird food! It has too much fat for a sedentary bird. You’ll have to research what would be appropriate for it.
In time, it will probably become accustomed to humans around it, although most likely never tame enough to sit on your hand.
On the other hand, it might die very soon. In which case you might wish to explain to your child that animals get old and ill just like people do, and that you gave it a warm, safe place to spend it’s final days rather than it being cold and terrified and killed by something else, so that is a kindness and a good thing, and sometimes the only thing you can do.
Warm-fuzzies are nice … but that still leaves the son mystified by the fact that the people who are supposed to be helping animals don’t want to help his find.
The final decision will remain with you and your son. I am suggesting that this may be an important lesson in the fact that sometimes decisions are difficult and that helping him to understand why the wildlife organizations don’t want to help his bird might make the world seem less unfair and less out of his control.
A local vet takes injured birds here. I’ve taken them some myself. Try calling some vets and ask if they take them or know if there is somewhere that will take it.
He’s not. I explained to him that it’s not native to the state and that the places we’re calling are places that try to help local native wildlife and the consider sparrows to be pest birds.
That said, to me it’s a just a hurt bird. Deride the “Warm fuzzies” but they’re the same thing that’d make me give a shit about a purple martin, should one ever crash in my lawn.
Broomstick, I thought about a stroke as well but had no idea if birds even had strokes under normal conditions. I was hoping it was just exhaustion but that seems unlikely now. We’ll probably wind up with it in a bird cage if it’s not recovering. I’ll have to read up on diet since I’d just throw econo-mix feeder seed at it.
I’ve made it clear that the bird’s chances may not be good but at least it’d be warm and relatively comfortable if it dies.
Mods can probably move this to MPSIMS or something since it doesn’t seem very GQ at this point.
Well, of course they do, it’s just in the wild a bird that has a stroke swiftly becomes dinner for something else. The bird I had, a lovebird named Junior, was also born with deformed hips that meant he was never able to perch normally. His parents threw him out of the next just after hatching, as birds don’t bother with defective offspring (the pair had three other chicks to take care of, after all). My husband raised him from that point.
People who met him would say “Oh! I never heard of a bird having a birth defect! Does that happen in the wild?” Of course it does - but deformed and crippled birds in the wild don’t last long. As in, just minutes in some cases.
The eco-mix wild bird seed is alright in a pinch. Use it until you find something else. Just don’t feed it long term to a captive bird.
The other problem is if the bird is having trouble eating. At my household we do know how to deal with that, but I’m not comfortable talking you through it on the Internet. If that’s a problem I’d either suggest a vet or a bird breeder show you, face-to-face, how to feed a bird in that state or simply accept the bird is going to die. It’s a difficult thing to take on, as even adult birds need to eat often.
When my husband was raising Junior he had to syringe feed him every two hours around the clock, no exceptions for several weeks, or was it two months? (It’s been awhile) (Which is how I wound up learning - he needed some real rest after the first couple days). No wonder bird parents need to work in pairs.
If an episode of *House *is a valid cite (hah!), and the symptom would mean the same thing in a sparrow as in a rat, this could be an indication of an infection.
