So my youngest daughter found a baby bird (possibly a robin?) in the grass on Sunday. Of course, she and her sister demanded that we rescue it. It’s Tuesday, the thing (now named “Chirp”) is still alive in a shoebox, cheeping away, and I have another mouth to feed. First it was worms and earwigs we found, then it was snails in a tin, now it is baby bird food from a bird store. The bird is nearly featherless. There’s gonna be a three hour window tomorrow during which nobody will be around to feed it, and no I’m not taking it to work.
Is there a chance we can keep it alive until it is ready to fly?
I suspect that it (and a dead one nearby) were in a nest inside a shrub that I cut down right in front of the house, as my daughter found it in the grass where I had tossed the branches. Do birds make nests in shrubs next to the front door of a house?
Robins will nest pretty much anywhere. We had one once nesting in a small hollow on a trellis, it was the worst possible place for it, but there they were. The little birds would sit and glare at you. We had one nesting in the garage once, it could only fly in or out when the door was open. That bird was dumb. Also saw one nesting in an evergreen shrub potted and for sale at Home Depot. Don’t know if anyone bought the shrub or not.
In my experience these babies take one of two courses of action:
Thrive no matter what you feed them, how often, etc, or
Die no matter how experienced you are and how hard you try
Sure, there is a very real possibility that you and your girls can raise your feathered friend to be a healthy adult, but you may want to warn them that these babies suddenly just die sometimes.
3 hours? Thats nothing- just give it some Gu or Carb Boom, what ever you have around they will be flying inside of 12 hours.
Seriously do a quick look up on the internet. We found a rabit hutch under our playset earlier this year, of course this was after my 3 year old found one of them and accidentally dropped it to it’s death. Anyhow there were a ton of websites giving direction on how to care for them if the Mom skipped town. We ended up putting a few sticks in front of the entrance during the day with the idea that if she came back she would knock them down. Sure enough the next Am the sticks were moved out of the way so we were off the hook. The cool thing is that the mom leaves these little guys all day long and only comes back at night. We ended up banning the kids from the playset until the babies moved out.
My gut tells me that 3 hours really is nothing for these little guys. What are you giving them for lquids?
I suggest a nest of old socks, in a box deep enough to keep it from wandering away. Worms, I think, are Natures’ answer to MREs. If your yard isn’t up to snuff in terms of worm production, visit the local fishing gear/supply store. They’ll have worms, meal worms, and probably a few other live critters like crickets. Pet stores will also carry some live feed such as crikets.
I’d also recommend a good pair of tweezers for initial feeding.
I suggest a nest of old socks, in a box deep enough to keep it from wandering away. Worms, I think, are Natures’ answer to MREs. If your yard isn’t up to snuff in terms of worm production, visit the local fishing gear/supply store. They’ll have worms, meal worms, and probably a few other live critters like crickets. Pet stores will also carry some live feed such as crikets.
I’d also recommend a good pair of tweezers for initial feeding.
All good info. Currently it’s in a shoebox (from my Brooks racing flats, I’ll have you know) on one of my old undershirts, out in the sun room; we think too warm is better than too cold. We are having trouble finding worms in our property, and my wife reminds me that we now live in a town that probably looks down on fishing as too plebeian, so bait stores aren’t exactly nearby. The pet store doesn’t get their meal worms until Thursday; the crickets my wife bought are too big for the little guy.
Right now, my brand new needle-nose pliers are being used as a feeding tool. The horror.
Apparently, they like to be fed every 20 minutes or so, from dawn to dusk. Sounds like a triathlete in the making.
The local A&P in West Milford, is just a hop, skip and a jump from Greenwood lake. They have a small refrigerator in the store dedicated to night crawlers. $3 a pop. How plebian can we get?
If you have some inland lakes not too distant, you might get lucky looking around there.
The other trick, is to water a section of your lawn heavily. It’ll “flush out” any worms in the ground, so to speak.
In my experience these babies take one of two courses of action:
Thrive no matter what you feed them, how often, etc, or
Die no matter how experienced you are and how hard you try
Sure, there is a very real possibility that you and your girls can raise your feathered friend to be a healthy adult, but you may want to warn them that these babies suddenly just die sometimes.
This has been my experience also. We’ve had better luck with raising the more omnivore types…like blue jays.
We have pretty good luck feeding baby birds dried kitten chow, soaked in water, and fed to them through a dropper.
I’ve had less success with the strictly bug eaters…probably because it’s harder to feed them appropriately, and takes a greater effort on our part to gather the food.
The worst seem to be the seed only eaters…like doves. Hard to keep living. The younger they are, the harder it is.
Until they’re pretty well feathered (see picture 3), it’s very important to keep baby birds warm 24/7. I borrowed my iguana’s electronic thermostat and put the lowest powered ceramic heat emitter in a heat lamp above the container containng the birds. I put the temperature probe in with them and set the thermostat for around 95F and turned it down as they got older.
I fed them primarily baby bird food. I would heat some water on the stove, mix it with the powder, and let it cool to around 100F and then feed it with a syringe. The stuff doesn’t keep very long so I’d have to make several batches a day and clean and sterilize everything. When they got a little older, I would glob the food on the end of a McD’s coffee stirrer and they would lick it off when it’s put in their open mouths. This is a bit safer since it avoids the risk of aspiration and is much easier than trying to get that stuff into a syringe.
Variety of food isn’t as important as quantity. They grow so fast that they need to eat often and basically as much as they can eat. Feeding is generally from sunrise to sunset. Birds generally don’t feed babies at night so they can go without food for awhile. You can take advantage of this by putting them someplace dark and quiet and adjust their schedule to match yours (within reason).
Birds fly instinctively but what they need to learn from their parents is how to find food. When they’re old enough to move around, they’ll want to follow you and imitate you. That’s why the robin is pecking at my keyboard. This is probably the hardest part. Once the bird is old enough to fly, it may just starve to death if you put it outside without show it the ropes.
One option might be to scout around for a nesting robin, and, if its nest isn’t too crowded and its babies are the same age or younger, put it in with the rest of them. Nests can get pretty crowded when they get bigger. A robin’s nest could probably safely hold 4 birds. Any more is pushing it and baby birds can get pushed out. Many birds will abandon a nest altogether if it’s disturbed too many times so if you go this route, try to wait for the mother to leave before approaching the nest. Even then, keep the interference to a bare minimum.
Another option would be to find a wildlife rehabilitator. They’re pretty busy this time of year but raising and releasing baby birds should be fairly routine for them.
Bird died this morning. It wasn’t asking for food, so wife opened its mouth and gave it some. Swallowed, soon after stopped breathing. Kids are quite upset, and are looking for a nice burial spot. I told the wife to resist calls for buying a bird (especially since she’s allergic to feathers!).
I suspect that we didn’t keep it warm enough over night, even though New Jersey August nights are damned warm (low 80s).
Such is life. Thanks for all the suggestions. Anyone need a canister of baby bird food?
Sorry to hear that, Ken. Nice try though. Let us know what kind of bird you get. Stay away from the parrots, they’ll outlive you.
Bernie
No f’ing way. The birds outside the house wake me up at o’dark thirty as it is. I already have a dog, two guinea pigs, and a horse (not to mention two houses). For crying out loud, I have a nearly 20 year old wetsuit, and a taped-over road helmet that will be replaced before I get another pet.
For crying out loud, I have a nearly 20 year old wetsuit, and a taped-over road helmet that will be replaced before I get another pet.
I seem to recall about 2 weeks ago, you were decrying the virtues of the wetsuit. So, as far as I’m concerned, you lose that one. The taped over road helmet, well, I’m sure there is a bike shop enroute to the bird store!
The birds probably don’t start making too much noise until the crack of dawn.
That’s amazing. It looks like you kept the cardinal as a pet because I know that juvenile cardinals have a brown beak instead of an orange one. How is it having a cardinal as a pet?
