The Puffer Forum

I found a baby bird on the sidewalk! I contacted a wildlife rehabber, and she told me to go ahead and take it because the sidewalk downtown was unsafe. I'm taking it home tonight and getting chicken-flavored baby food to give it every two hours. We're taking it to a wildlife rehabber tomorrow. I can post a picture if you guys want to see!

do you even have to ask if we want to see a picture?

Of course we wanna see a pic!!

Chicken flavour baby food!! Sounds a little cannibalistic to feed to a bird!

aww wee baby birds are cute, well some are <3

He's pretty ugly, but my maternal instincts kicked in big-time and said "OMG IT IS SO TINY AND DEFENSELESS AND SWEET!!!" I'll post pictures at his next feeding.

The first feeding went well. He ate one teaspoon of organic baby food. He's supposed to get one tablespoon every two hours all day, so we'll see if he has the energy to swallow more easily next time.

Thats awesome, i did this a few years back, I found a whole nest with 4 babies in it, on the ground I tired but I didn't know enough and they all died, i felt so bad

Don

Yeah, keeping a baby animal alive for more than a day can be hard if you're not very experienced. But if you locate and call a wildlife rehabber, they can give you instructions on how to take care of them until you can drop them off.

I've taken care of many baby birds. Most of them lived and were released. We even had a red tailed hawk when I was young. Most of them were robins and were fed wet cat food and worms. The last bird we rehabbed had a bad leg and it survived surgery and died about 10 mins after. That was really sad. We also raised a bluejay from a baby and released him. He was quite tame and freaked the neighbours out. They trapped it and relocated it about a year or two after it was released. Such a shame, he was so pretty and friendly.

I asked a local rehab place about volunteering. It's not the one that the baby is going to - this one only takes mammals - but their site directed me to the place that's taking it.

That would be so much fun!

It died. I guess I somehow made it aspirate on the food. It was looking so much better, holding up its head and opening its eyes, even opening its mouth for the food so that I didn't have to open its beak each time... And then it started thrashing and opening its beak wide, and then it stopped breathing.

DOH!!!


Yea, the mother force feeds it to the gullet... the baby doesn't know how to swallow at the early stages.

J-P wrote:DOH!!!


Yea, the mother force feeds it to the gullet... the baby doesn't know how to swallow at the early stages.

DOH? That's not very nice, J-P.

This baby was perfectly capable of swallowing. It had one and a half meals without any trouble. It was getting stronger. It wasn't a tiny baby - it was old enough that it had starting molting its down.

sorry ... just that "Simpsons" generic reaction when something goes wrong.

I didn't know the sage of the bird development, and apologize for taking it lightly. On the other hand some species of bird are still force fed long after they moult their first set of feathers. We have all seen pics and vids of "babies" being fed when much larger than their parents.

I know it is heart breaking and again apologize.