There's a Baby Bird on the Ground

The first question is which kind of baby bird it is, because the right answer is opposite for the two.

Fledgling — leave it

Fully feathered, short stubby tail, hops and flutters, grips your finger, opens its eyes and looks at you.

This bird is meant to be on the ground. Fledglings leave the nest before they can fly properly and spend several days to a couple of weeks hopping about at ground level while the parents feed them and teach them to forage. It is a normal, necessary stage.

The parents are almost certainly within a few metres, watching you, and waiting for you to leave.

What to do: nothing. If it is in immediate danger — a road, an exposed lawn with a cat about — move it a short distance into cover, ideally low in a shrub. Then go indoors, and keep cats in for a week.

Taking a healthy fledgling to a rehabilitator is the most common way well-meaning people separate a bird from parents that were doing a better job.

Nestling — put it back

Naked, or covered in patchy down, eyes possibly still closed, cannot stand or grip, does not hop.

This bird fell or was blown out and cannot survive on the ground. Put it back.

1. Find the nest — usually directly above, in the nearest tree or shrub.
2. Pick the bird up gently in cupped hands. Warm it briefly if it feels cold.
3. Put it in the nest with the others and leave.

Handling it will not cause rejection. Birds have a poor sense of smell and do not abandon young that have been touched. That belief is folklore, and its practical effect is that people watch a nestling die rather than spend thirty seconds saving it.

If you cannot find or reach the nest: make a substitute. A small plastic tub or berry basket with drainage holes, lined with the old nest material or dry grass, fastened securely in the same tree as close to the original site as you can manage. Put the bird in, step back, and watch from a window.

Parents will usually return within an hour. If they have not after two hours of you being genuinely out of sight, call a rehabilitator.

When it does need help — either kind

• Visibly injured, bleeding, or a wing hanging wrong
• A cat has had it — always, regardless of visible injury. Bacteria on cat teeth and claws cause infections that are fatal within a day or two without antibiotics.
• Cold, weak, unresponsive, or covered in flies or fly eggs
• The parents are confirmed dead
• No parent has returned after two hours of proper observation

Then: box, dark, quiet, warm, no food or water, and phone a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.

Why no food or water

Fed wrongly, a baby bird dies.

• Water dripped into the beak goes into the lungs and drowns it.
• Bread, milk and mealworms alone are the usual attempts and none of them is a correct diet.
• Different species need very different food, and the intervals are as short as fifteen minutes.

Rehabilitators are trained and equipped for this. In the United States it is also illegal to keep most native birds without a permit, under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Which species is it

Often impossible, and it does not change what you do. Two you may recognise:

• American robin fledglings are heavily spotted below and are the commonest garden find.
• Mourning doves leave the nest looking almost adult but with a shorter tail and scaly-edged feathers.

The response is the same for all of them: feathered and hopping stays out, naked and helpless goes back.

Preventing the problem

• Keep cats indoors during the fledging season, roughly May to July. Cats are the largest direct human-associated cause of bird death in North America and fledgling weeks are the worst of it.
• Delay hedge trimming and tree work until nesting is over.
• Check before mowing long grass and ground cover.

If it is a duckling or a gosling

Different rules. Waterfowl leave the nest within a day of hatching and follow the parent, so a duckling alone is genuinely separated rather than fledging.

Look for the family first — they are often closer than they appear, and reuniting is far better than rescue. If there is no parent after an hour of watching from a distance, that is a rehabilitator case, and quickly, because a lone duckling chills fast.

The same principle applies as with songbirds, and the practical route is the same: a box, dark and quiet, and a phone call.