What To Do If You Find A Baby Bird

Every spring, the trees and bushes fill with nests, and those nests fill up with baby birds. If you find a baby bird, and it’s not in a nest, it doesn’t necessarily need your help. Here’s what you need to know.

If the bird is visibly injured

If you can tell the bird is injured, like if it clearly has a broken leg or wing, don’t worry about the rest of this list—call up your local wildlife rehabilitator. There’s information from WIRES here, or you can google for “wildlife rehabilitator” plus your location.

If you can’t identify an injury, or you aren’t sure because maybe the bird just looks kind of uncomfortable and gawky, keep reading.

An oldie: what to do if you find a baby songbird! https://t.co/oXagPL88Mh pic.twitter.com/BbvpJhjA02

— Rosemary Mosco (Bird And Moon) (@RosemaryMosco) May 13, 2020

If the bird has feathers and is hopping around a bit

Congratulations, you’ve found a fledgling! A fledgling may not be able to fly, but they can hop, walk, or flit from branch to branch. If they are a perching bird (like your typical songbird), their toes are strong enough that they can cling to a branch or to your finger.

Fledglings are awkward teenage birds. As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology points out, they leave the nest under parental supervision, and may spend a few days hopping around before they figure out how to make it on their own. The parents keep an eye on them, but they may have four or five offspring to watch at once.

These birds don’t need your help; they’re getting along just fine. (Even if you can find the nest, there’s no point to putting them back in. They’ll hop right back out.) If you want to be sure the parents will come back, just sit around and keep an eye out. You’ll see them return.

If the bird is featherless and helpless

Nestlings are birds that need to stay in their nest. They’re recently hatched, and if they’re brand new their eyes may still be closed and they may not have any feathers yet.

These birds need to go back in the nest. They can’t travel far on their own, so if you find one, the nest is close by. It may be hidden, though. Carefully put the bird back in the nest.

There’s a myth that birds will reject any offspring that smell like humans. This isn’t true, Cornell reports, so don’t hesitate to return the nestling to its parents.

If you can’t find the nest, you can make one. Follow the directions here to reconstruct a nest. This is also what you should do if an entire nest has fallen out of a tree.