Mourning Dove at a professional rehabilitation center. Photo: Camilla Cerea/Audubon
The Dos and Don'ts of Helping Baby and Injured Birds
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Learn how to tell if a bird really needs your help, and what you should do if it does.
By Zach Hutchinson / Rockies Audubon Springtime brings an abundance of new life: flowering native plants, bursting buds, and baby birds. While we rarely add human intervention to that list, baby birds often cause an overabundance of care and caution that can occasionally mislead people into doing more harm than good for our feathered friends. There are countless pieces of advice for what to do when you find an injured or baby bird. While we cannot describe how to handle every situation that may arise with birds in danger, we can provide tips for the most common situations that community members may stumble into. • DO place featherless birds back into their nest • DON’T try to help or feed baby birds with feathers • DO keep your pets leashed when near ducklings and goslings Read the full article... |
Wildlife First Aid: What to do if you find injured or orphaned birds and other wildlife
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[This information is adapted from Colorado Outdoors Magazine’s 2016 article on wildlife rehabilitation by Meredith Swett Walker]
1. Observe: Stand back and keep pets away from the animal. Is it moving and acting normally? Is there an obvious injury? Is mom visiting it or in the area? Songbirds that have just outgrown their nest often cannot fly or only fly weakly. This is normal. They typically scatter into brushy or concealed areas. If you watch, you will likely see one of their parents making quick visits to bring them food. If the bird looks healthy, remove yourself and your pets from the area to avoid scaring off parents and check on it later. A common accident for birds is colliding with a window. Often the bird is stunned and will sit below the window, unable to fly. The best thing to do in this scenario is to remove pets from the area and give the bird some time. They frequently recover on their own and fly off. Check on the bird and if has not flown off in an hour or so, reassess the situation and proceed to step 2. You can learn about methods to prevent window collisions from the American Bird Conservancy: Solutions to Birds Hitting Windows Fledgling songbirds are not the only babies that are frequently mistaken for orhphans. Mother deer and elk will leave their fawns and calves alone to rest in a safe hiding place when they go out to feed. These babies are not abandoned, just waiting for mom to return! Young fox and coyotes often play outside their den while mom is off hunting and may act very tame. Leave them alone! Mom will be back soon. 2. If the animal is genuinely injured, abandoned or orphaned, put it in a safe, warm place, DO NOT FEED IT and call a wildlife rehabilitator. Lea Peshock, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator with Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, recommends placing animals half-on and half-off a heating pad set on LOW. Getting chilled or overheating can kill an injured or young animal. Cover the box or cage containing the animal and put it in a quiet place. Darkness and quiet will reduce the animal’s stress. Peshock advises that you do not feed the animal. Chilled animals cannot digest food properly and if animals are fed the wrong kind of food, it can cause life threatening digestive problems. Improper feeding technique can cause the animal to inhale food into the lungs and lead to pneumonia. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who will advise you on how to get the animal to them, and steps to take in the meantime. 3. Contact a licensed Colorado Wildlife Rehabilitator: In Mesa County, the closet wildlife rehabilitation facility that is currently accepting animals is the Pauline S. Schneegas Wildlife Foundation near Silt. Pauline S. Schneegas Foundation 5945 County Road 346 Silt Colorado 81652 Executive Director: Nanci Lambach (970) 876-5676 or [email protected] You can also find a list of Colorado wildlife rehabilitators with their contact information at http://cpw.state.co.us/aboutus/Pages/SpecialWildlifeLicenses.aspx Click on the link labeled “Wildlife Rehabilitators List” at the bottom of the page. You can also call your local Colorado Parks and Wildlife office to get this information or call (303)-866-3437 to report injured or problem wildlife. If you are outside of Colorado, you can visit the website Animal Help Now, https://ahnow.org, and click on “Wildlife Issue” to find a veterinarian or wildlife rehabilitator in the area that can help. |