Masked bandit on the wing, Part 2
Upon finding the blind and featherless nestling, our first hope was to return it to the nest. With one glance upward, my parents and I knew this would be impossible. The red maple tree from which it had fallen rose straight as a needle 10 m (33') to the forest canopy. We could see no sign of the nest or parents.
Ronda DeVold of Wildlife Rehabilitation Network recommends creating a makeshift nest from a plastic bowl and placing it back in the tree. There it will be safe from earthbound predators and the parents can continue to feed and care for it.(1) We could have nailed it to the side of the trunk, but this idea didn't occur to us that afternoon in July 1980.
Most birds have a relatively poor sense of smell, about the same as humans. The old wives' tale, that they can detect human odour and reject a baby you have handled, is simply wrong, but they will get spooked if you hang around, DeVold asserts.(1)
We tried leaving this one where we had found it and watching from a discreet distance, but as the afternoon wore on, the parents did not appear. The baby was already too weak to lift its head, make a sound or attract any attention. Apparently it had already lain neglected for several hours before we discovered it.
Strange bird food
We decided to try feeding it. Not knowing what kind of bird it was, we had could only guess at its diet. Living high in the canopy, it was probably used to insects, which would be high in protein. We started with cat food.Put food in a baby bird's beak and it will swallow. This is a reflex, just like the way your leg snaps when the doctor hits your knee with a mallet. It was easy to force feed the baby. After a few bites, it seemed to regain some energy.
But by then the sun had begun to set. Our foundling would have to spend the night indoors. The cottage has no electricity so we couldn't provide a heat lamp to keep the baby warm, so we set a kerosene lantern beside his basket.
Smudge the cat, an instinctive predator, and intrigued at any fuss being made, got locked in the bathroom!
This was all we could do. With a big yard at home, we had plenty of experience finding baby birds. Without parents to care for it, we didn't
Latest Articles