kedreeva:

lxauxrxexn:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

jumpingjacktrash:

howtocan:

Baby bird season is incoming and I’d like to remind everyone that birds do not have a significant sense of smell. Bird parents will not reject birdlets because you have handled them.

If you see smol birbs with few or no feathers on the ground, you can safely put them back into their nest, bird parents will still care for them.

If you see smol birbs with some or most feathers on the ground, please leave them there, as bird parents are probably nearby watching and feeding.

nakey bird = accidentally fell out, is cold and scared, put back in nest! if you can’t reach the nest, try to put it on a wide branch or fork so predators can’t get at it as easily.

scruffy feather bird = starting to try the fly thing, not very good at it. only put in nest/branch if predators abound, i.e. you have four outdoor cats and they’re licking their chops.

fluffy feather bird = smol fly guy! do nothing. can probably get away from predators and will flip its shit if you pick it up.

Reblogging this because I’d always heard the ‘Don’t touch a distressed bird its mom will reject it’ thing treated as fact before now, I didn’t realise it wasn’t true…

It’s confirmed that the oil from human hands will make bird feathers fall off so please if you have to touch the bird be careful and put it to its home

I have no idea where you heard this myth, but it is not true at all… There is no component in a human’s skin oil that will cause feathers to fall off of a bird at any life stage. The oil may stay on the feather until the bird cleans it off, but feathers are actually attached under their skin very strongly and are not going to suffer harm from being touched. I say this as someone who has raised hundreds of fowl and several baby wild birds over the last two decades.

I can tell you from experience, you can pick up a baby bird and carry it back to the nest, with the parents screaming at you the whole time, and they’ll take it back. They want their babies! 

And no, the oil on your hands won’t hurt them in the slightest. About the only things your skin oil will hurt are corals, actively growing rockwork in caves, and some other things that are hard to touch.