Ah yes, summer is here. Cue no school, popsicles and ice cream, Slurpees, Starbucks' Frappucinos, beaches, pools, and...raining eggs and baby birds from the trees.
When you have a nest by your house, you most likely want to watch the hatchlings grow day by day. When the mother bird flies out of the nest, you go check up on the babies, but there are no eggs and/or hatchlings. You check all of the surrounding area and you find it, sitting all alone. What do you do? You have been told by your parents or even grandparents that if you touch the eggs, the mother can smell it and never come back. You don't want to baby to die either way, so what can you do?
First and foremost, let's debunk this "mother birds can smell human scent" myth. Miyoko Chu, a biologist at Cornell, states that "birds don't have a strong sense of smell, so you won't leave a scent that will alarm a parent." Along with that, Chu states, "Usually birds are quite devoted to their young and not easily deterred from taking care of them...If you back up and watch them, in a lot of cases the parents will come back to feed the young and protect it." So yes, your stinky human hands won't alarm the mother bird and force it to never come back again, but I wouldn't climb into the nest and stroke the baby birds every day since your dirty hands can transmit diseases to them. We wouldn't want that happening.
Now that we have that out of the way, what happens when the egg or hatchling falls out of its nest and onto the ground? Like I said in the paragraph above, due to poor scent glands, the mother bird can't smell her young and can't find them by herself. First, identify if it's a hatchling, nestling, or fledging. Identifying which stage it is at could really help.
If the egg is not cracked, or the hatchling is still moving, pick it up gently and put it back in the nest immediately. Wait for the mother to come back. This goes for nestlings too. Keep yourself distant from the surrounding area, as the mother can be too spooked to come back for its young. The mother is nearby somewhere, so there's no need to worry about her abandoning her lost baby.
If the baby is a fledgling, sad to say, but it's pointless to put it back in the nest. Fledglings at this stage will often fall out of the nest to practice their flying, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to go through the pain of putting it back in the nest every thirty minutes. If you see a fledgling on the ground, simply perch it on a branch, high away from animals near the nest, and leave it be. The mother is somewhere nearby watching it try to take flight, so there's nothing to worry about.
If you find a baby bird but can't locate the nest, or the nest is torn into pieces, collect as many pieces as you can and create a makeshift nest. Put it back into the tree. If there's no trace of the nest, call your local wildlife rehabilitation center immediately.
If you find a baby bird with blood or any injuries, call your local wildlife rehabilitation center immediately.
What if the bird keeps falling out of the nest and it is not a fledgling? If you're from a bipolar-weather state like me, it's possible that these birds fell from harsh weather conditions overnight, or maybe the mother flapped her wings too hard and knocked it out of the nest. If you want to keep the nest secure so this doesn't happen, Doctor Beck recommends getting a deep container and putting the nest inside, so that if the wind blows on the nest, it won't fall out (kind of like a homemade birdhouse). She also recommends that you watch the nest closely to make sure the mother comes back and recognizes it.
Lastly, do not raise the baby on your own. I know you want to be the rescuer of a baby bird, but do not take it away from the nest or attempt to feed it. You have to be trained with a special license to rehabilitate baby birds. The steps that are listed above explain what to do when you find a baby bird. Those steps help out a lot more than raising the bird by yourself would.
I hope everyone now knows what to do when he or she finds a baby bird that has fallen out of its nest. Also, always make sure to wash your stinky human hands after handling a baby bird!
