In my mom’s backyard, I just found a half-dead robin nestling. He fell out of the nest and got tanlged in some weeds. He was lying baking in the sun all day. I got some water down his gullet (without drowning him). He needs some kind of food and water. He’s presently too weak to go back in the nest, but I can reach the nest no problem and put him back as soon as he looks less dead.
Parent bird nearby. What canI give him to help revive him enough to go home?
Never mind. The little birdy has expired. I got better look at the nest. It had flipped sideways and dumped the baby and a sibling on the ground. The sibling was dead and bloodied from the fall. I think this little guy had injuries from the fall too.
For future reference, this site says not to give the bird food or water and return it to the nest right away.
This site says the same thing, and so does this one and this one.
Unfortunately, upon further inspection. Returning it to the nest wouldn’t ahve been possible. The nest had fallen and flipped over and was falling to pieces. It was in a place where a gust of wind would have ripped it apart, terrible birdy engineering.
I didn’t put water in the bird’s mouth, I used a tube to get it properly down the gullet. The bird had been lying in the sun for several hours. The mother was nearby, but could do nothing. The babies legs were thoroughly tangled in some weeds which is why it was stuck baking in the noon sun on a hot paving stone.
BTW, I did contact a wild life center that I know deals with birds, but at the time I found it, it need rather urgent attention. I assume the mother had been doing her best to take cafe of her entangled survivor, but it was barely alive when I found it.
Will a mother attempt to save a child that has fallen out of the nest or will she just leave it on the ground?
I know with fledglings of starlings and similar species the parents care for it on the ground. There are a few days when young birdies prepare to fledge and they have to leave the nest because it gets too crowded and their feathers get damaged. So they hang out and hide in the bushes and their parents feed them on the ground. In a few days, they take flight. I’m not actually sure if parents will do that for nestlings that have hit the deck.
These two, the half-dead one and the fully-dead one, were still half-naked and parents would have to cover them up at night and such. I’m not sure if they would have done so on the ground. I’ve replaced a young bird in a nest before and the parents completely flip out when you approach their baby on the ground. In this case, the mother was just half-heartedly complaining. I thought the one baby was dead until it moved a bit. It’s legs were also very limp, not broken, but zero strength. I figred if I missed with the tube, at least it would die quickly from aspirating the water, but I did seem to get it into the crop. Edit: I don’t know if that helps really dehydrated birds though. I was hoping if it revived a little I could buy bird formula and keep it going until I got it to the rehab centre.